


Small World

by doomenatta



Category: Slime Rancher (Video Game)
Genre: Character Development, Denial of Feelings, Drunkenness, F/F, Female Casey, Lesbians in Space, Love Confessions, Moving On, POV Lesbian Character, Parent Death, Post Mochi's Megabucks update, Rating May Change, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-04-22 21:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14317281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomenatta/pseuds/doomenatta
Summary: It had been a few years since Beatrix joined the ranchers on the Far, Far Range. She'd done all there was to do on her little piece of paradise, but just as the isolation of it all became too much, a business deal expanded her entire world.





	1. Welcome Home

Beatrix LeBeau was born into a world revolutionized by the Far, Far Range.

Of course, the discovery of the first life sustaining planet aside from Earth was big news, but the technological revolution that followed in the first hundred years after its discovery was what was really extraordinary. The discoveries of blue metal and plortonium were just the beginning; they pioneered the faster, sleeker, safer spaceships that allowed interstellar travel to become commonplace. Everything expanded from that point on.

Beatrix wanted to be a rancher for as long as she could remember. Growing up in the country didn't leave her with many opportunities to experience the wonders of plortonomics first hand, aside from the nearly supernatural ability of tangle plort enhanced fertilizer, but textbooks and rare trips to the capital left her in awe of spaceships that could travel 1,000 light years in a singular julian year, skyscrapers that reached toward the heavens, completely transparent and taller than anything Bea had seen in her life, and holophones: a seemingly arbitrary improvement to personal electronics, but they were really cool nonetheless.

So, when an Extraterrestrial Activities Committee (ETAC) recruiter set up a stand in her high school in her senior year, Beatrix submitted her information and began the grueling process of becoming a certified extraterrestrial resource assembler; also known as a Rancher.

Her higher education was paid for by the ETAC and 7Zee Corporation with the only restriction being that she double major in physics and astronomy. In both her military and collegiate studies, she passed every physical, oral, and written exam with flying colors. She graduated from Zee University at twenty-one years old with bachelor’s degrees in physics and astronomy, and she returned to her life, waiting for the day she was called upon to fulfill her childhood dreams.

The longer she waited, though, the more she began to doubt that she would ever get the chance to do just that. When she couldn’t find a job despite her impressive double major, she decided to put her dreams of roughing it in the great beyond aside and focus on exploring the world beneath her feet. However, those dreams did not remain dormant for long.

Faster than Beatrix would have thought, a vacancy had opened on a ranch a thousand lightyears away, and she was appointed a mission that began an entirely new chapter in her life.

* * *

 

Beatrix found her mind was blank as she passed under the entrance to her ranch. Her entire body throbbed dully as she plopped on the stoop in front of the Ranch House and she set her vacpack aside hastily, giving her arms a much-needed break. Relief flooded her as she slumped over and laid her head against her scabbed knees. She closed her eyes and let loose a low groan of pain that was muffled against the cloth of her pants, wrapping her brown arms around her thighs and running her gloveless hands over her wounded calves.

A mix of white, newly opened bandages and old dirty ones covered an abundance of small cuts that were scattered along her arms and fingers, and first aid cream was sloppily smeared onto burns, courtesy of overexcited boom slimes, that stung her legs and lower back.

Her protesting stomach only allowed her a few moments to comfort her aching limbs. As she sat up, she looked around. A few harmless largos were out of their corrals and bounding around the ranch, but that was a problem for later. She knew that the clean up for her absence would be annoying and didn’t want to try to assess the damage just yet.

Her stomach gurgled again as she caught a stray pogofruit setting a few feet away, and she quickly grabbed her vacpack. A few seconds later, she was holding a perfectly ripe pogofruit, smelling delicious and peachy.

Her cracked and dirty fingernails dug into the pogofruit’s soft red skin, peeling the spotted rind away from the sweet flesh beneath. By now it was about a quarter after noon. The sun shone down bright and warmed the back of Beatrix’s head and shoulders. Her mind was blank with exhaustion and hunger as she dug into her fruit; juice ran through her fingers and down her arm, soaking the bandages, but she paid it no mind as she chewed tiredly. She smiled through her voracious eating. The sweet taste was so welcoming she could have cried out of happiness.

She had set out five days before to acquire a few slimes for Viktor, a mission thought to be completely reasonable in its simplicity: five rad slimes, two crystal slimes, and three honey slimes. It could've been completed within two hours at most, and the five hundred newbucks he was offering her seemed like a fair price for the inconvenience. However, a multitude of mistakes that could only be described as major fuck ups had occurred in the Moss Blanket, and her brief outing turned into a days-long struggle with tarrs and feral largos (not to mention well-meaning but destructive slimes).

In the end, she came out of it with a broken jetpack and no gloves. The jetpack had been broken by a particularly aggressive tarr slamming her against a cliff in the Moss Blanket, and the gloves had been absorbed by a feral hunter largo.

But she made it out alive. She was gloveless, tired, and hungry, but she was alive.

Gods, what she would give to just _sleep_.

A symphony of explosions and chicken clucks sounded out and pulled Beatrix out of her tired and ravenous trance. A list of chores, already burned into her brain from years of routine, started running through her mind, and she dejectedly pushed the thought of going to sleep away in favor of getting what needed doing done. She quickly finished her pogofruit, wiped the remaining juices on her shorts, and headed over to her corral containing radboom largos, vacpack and gear hoisted back around her torso.

* * *

 

Hours passed, and she slowly made her way around the ranch. Her five-day absence caused quite a stir amongst its inhabitants due to feeders running out days before her return and plort collectors filling to maximum capacity, leaving quite an excess of plorts littering the corrals. Damage control was tough to manage in her state, but eventually, she finished the toils of feeding and cleaning and collecting plorts for most of the corrals on the ranch.

She finally made her way around to the Grotto. By then, she had fallen into a working trance, ignoring the heaviness of her eyelids and the discomfort in her every limb. She blocked everything out aside from the end objective: finish work and then sleep.

What eventually drew her attention away from her work was the small beep that signaled a new StarMail. It echoed from the coordinator handing off her hip off the cavernous purple walls of the grotto, coming and fading like the light of the phosphor largos surrounding her. Their lights were erratic as they bounced unhappily in their corrals, frowns plastered on their faces due to hunger and the plethora of uncollected plorts around them.

She was only momentarily surprised by the sound, but the pause in her work was enough to make the heaviness of her eyelids too much to bear. The soreness in her arms and legs had reached a peak and were now shaking slightly. She knew she had to stop soon, and a mix of curiosity and fatigue urged her to cease her duties as soon as the feeders were full. She soon began the short trek back to her house, leaving the excessive plorts to be a problem for tomorrow-Beatrix.

She dragged her hand along the rocky wall of the Grotto, the roughness dragging her down to earth as she walked. Smells of growing fruit and wet soil permeated the air as she emerged. The moon was high in the sky, casting an eerily beautiful white light onto everything in its path. Her shadow stretched out to the left along with the shadows of fruit trees and corrals, and she yawned, squeezing tears out of the corners of her eyes.

A faint lazy, sluggish sound reached her ears: the sound of goo waves pushing against the steep incline overlooking the Slime Sea to her left. It joined in with the sound of happily jiggling slimes, content in their recently restored corrals, and the _crunch crunch_ of her sneakers on the rocky path that wound through the corrals and garden plots.

Her heavy legs finally approached her house. Now she was basically walking with her eyes closed, a headache slowly but surely building behind her eyes. She pinched the bridge of her nose, scrunching her eyes up and fighting off sleep just enough to get home and read this damned StarMail.

Her footfalls were heavy and _thunked_ up the wooden steps, and, when she finally slumped against the door and turned the knob, she nearly fell through the doorway.

A familiar scene greeted her as she stumbled in. Her bed was exactly as she left it: sheets and blankets rumpled, pillows strewn about, and her trusted pink slime plushie atop it all. The long window along the back wall gave her a view of the moonlit ocean beyond. Her 7Zee issued computer seemed to glare into the dark room, and through her blurry, sleepy eyes Bea saw the StarMail icon blinking on her home screen. She didn't bother turning on the lights as she closed the door and took off her shoes. She hung up her vacpack on its designated hooks next to the entrance and walked to her desk.

Her bare feet were cold as she pattered across the concrete floor, and she really regretted not requesting slippers in her last supply drop. She felt the computer chair creak beneath her as she plopped down and shielded her eyes from the glare, struggling blindly for the brightness controls. Eventually, she managed to bring the unbearable brightness down to a soft glow, and she clicked on the flashing _You've got mail!_ notification.

 

**_(no subject)_ **

_Mochi Miles_

 

_Hey, I know it's late over there, but it's been a while since you've shown your face and I've been wondering if you got eaten by a tarr. Nevertheless, I have some work you may be interested in, tarr snack or not. This is time sensitive, so shoot me a mail if you're ok._

 

_Later, tater._

 

_Mochi Miles_

 

Bea ran a weary hand down her face. It came to rest on her cheek, and she leaned back in the chair.

She felt her lips form a faint smile. She found herself remembering Mochi’s original business proposition and how happy she had been to make a kind-of-sort-of-friend out there in the lonely, desolate expanse of the Far, Far Range. Mochi was brusque and impatient in nature, but Bea found herself drawn to the tenacious girl for her determination and personality. Even if she could be rough around the edges, Mochi had been a lovely business partner and friend (even though she had taken an inordinately long time to admit that she and Bea were indeed friends) to Beatrix ever since.

Bea had always hoped that they would get to spend some time together, but she knew better than to hope too hard. They were both working women carrying out a job that required nigh constant attention and accommodation. She found that the prospect of spending quality time with Mochi, time spent not as business partners but as friends, would be almost impossible, especially with how consumed Mochi became by her work when actual clients often came into the picture.

But regardless of the sadness that never getting to see Mochi wrought, talking to her when she could brought a lot of satisfaction to Bea. After all, her only companions weren’t exactly great conversationalists, and talking to Mochi always resulted in good conversation that nearly always brought laughter.

This email was no different. Even though she made it out to look like it was merely a business proposal, Mochi’s concern shone through to Bea. She was touched that Mochi had noticed how she had just dropped off the map for a few days, something she wasn’t wont to do.

She stared at her computer for a moment, a slightly goofy smile on her face, battling sleep before typing out a response:

 

**_Re: (no subject)_ **

_Beatrix LeBeau, Mochi Miles_

 

_Hey, Mochi. I'm fine. I've been a bit tied up the last few days, but it's nothing a good night’s sleep won't fix. And, no, I’m not a tarr snack quite yet. You haven’t lost your favorite worker bee (Lucky you ;-) )_

 

_I may not respond after this until morning, but I am interested in the job. I'll probably be making a stop over by your place tomorrow if you want to talk then._

 

_Yours, Beatrix_

 

She stared at the computer as she hit “send.” Suddenly, tomorrow didn’t seem like it was going to be such a hassle.

She shut the computer off and slowly stood up. Both her joints and the computer chair groaned in protest, and she raised her arms high above her head. The stretch cracked several of her vertebrae as she stood on the balls of her feet, and with a final groan, verbal this time, she trod quickly to her bed.

The amount of comfort she felt as she fell into bed was indescribable, so much so that any worries of getting her bed dirty were immediately cast aside. She rested with her face in her pillow for a moment, so relieved she could cry, letting the soreness ravage her body before she flipped around.

She pulled her legs up to her chest, dislodged the blankets from beneath her, and pulled them up to her chin. Suddenly, she was struck with momentary panic in her sleepy stupor. Her eyes were heavy as she reached blindly for her pink slime plushie; however, her fingers quickly snatched up the soft thing, and she held it close to her chest.

The lulling sounds of the sea dragged her off to the world of sleep for the first time in days. Wearing dirty and slightly singed clothes and grubby bandages, Beatrix LeBeau was home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! This whole fic is just something I've been toying around with for a while. Criticism is always welcome, as this is a bit of an exercise in my writing abilities, and don't be afraid to leave a comment!
> 
> Also disclaimer: This is a fanfiction using the characters from the world of Slime Rancher, a video game developed by Monomi Park and designed by Nick Popovich, and I claim no ownership over any characters in/the world of Slime Rancher. This is a work of my own imagination, which I am not profiting off of in any way due to this publication. This is not believed to be a part of the canon produced by Popovich. This is purely meant for entertainment purposes and is not a part of the official story line for Slime Rancher.
> 
> I thank Nick Popovich and Monomi Park for bringing the world of Slime Rancher to life because without it I probably would have had a lot more boring afternoons than I knew what to do with lol


	2. The Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bea makes plans for the future.

Bea woke up entirely too late the next day. She awoke spread eagle, blankets wrapped around her limbs and a pillow covering her face.

When she pushed the pillow off of her, she saw that the sun shone in through the back window, illuminating the dust particles floating in a deep yellow glow. She let her head drop back into its pillowy haven with a groan. It took several tries to shake her arm free of the confines of her blankets, and when she succeeded she brought her hand to rub at her face.

She wrinkled her nose at the sticky feeling of dried drool on her cheek.

The bed creaked as she threw her legs over the edge, taking her blankets with them. She sat up and hunched over.

Her feet firmly planted, she set about disentangling her legs. Engulfing her in a green curtain, her hair hung around her in sloppy strands, supposedly the remnants of the loose bun she kept it in at all times. She would have to look for the lost hair band later, an endeavor that she wasn’t looking forward to, she thought with a groan. Her pants were filthy and wrinkled, and she decided she definitely had to change before heading out to Mochi's.

She stood, free from the soft prison. From outside, she could hear the Roostros’ crowing, and she decided to take a look at what time it was.

She couldn’t believe her eyes when her coordinator told her that it was well past noon. Moving in a second, shedding her clothes from her body in record speed, Bea was seized by the icy cold grip she was so used to feeling in her grade school days: the fear of having overslept. She had overslept. Big time.

She almost tripped over her pants as they slipped past her knees and crumpled onto the floor. Her hair whipped wildly when she removed her jacket and shirt. She tried to spit out the untamed strands that made their way into her mouth to no avail, and the bandana around her neck choked her as she caught it on her stained pink shirt.

Eventually, she managed to discard the offending articles of clothing. She kicked them all into a pile in the corner of her room, the one right before the entrance to the kitchen, and she began the journey of finding clean clothes.

Bea was typically an organized person, but the exertion of ranching and exploring often made one so tired that when doing laundry, one didn’t always remember what went where.

Especially with dressers like these with all these damned drawers.

She began pulling out drawers with reckless abandon. Most of them were empty, but she ultimately found the things she needed (albeit in a completely random fashion, with underwear and shirts in the same drawer but pants in one across the room). By the end of the ordeal, Bea had found a spare jacket identical to the one that was a part of her everyday routine, some clean cargo shorts, which she quickly clipped her coordinator onto, and a baggy orange shirt.

Just by glancing at her reflection she was embarrassed. Her hair and bangs absolutely wild and hanging halfway down her back, her bare arms and legs covered in grimy bandages, and her face looking tired, she was, admittedly, a mess.

But that didn’t matter. What did matter was the fact that Mochi had a time sensitive job and that Bea needed to get her butt over to the manor as soon as possible.

So, she set out in her sorry state of affairs. As she passed her computer, she saw another StarMail icon flashing but elected to ignore it. She figured it was something from Mochi, most likely telling her to hurry it up.

Despite the chaos happening in Bea’s home, the day outside was calm and beautiful, as days on the Far, Far Range often were. The sun shone and showered the land with a blanket of warmth not too hot, and a cool wind briefly passed over Bea as she stepped outside of the house with her gear in hand. She shut the door behind her with a gentle clack.

The trip over to the teleporter in the Grotto was short. Her gear jangled noisily as she jogged under the stone arches leading to the cave.

Humidity stuck to her skin and the temperature dropped considerably once she passed through; she could hear her cheerfully jiggling phosphor largos all the way from the opening of the cavern. Gravel crunched under her feet as she approached the teleporter to the Miles Manor, and, with a short and slightly disorientating step, she was on her way.

Mechanics too complicated for most anyone to understand whirred and churned, breaking apart the building blocks of her very nature and rebuilding them with impossible speed miles and miles away, and she materialized. The sun shone slightly higher there, and, despite the fact that both her coordinator and her map vehemently refused to give her any signs of where she was, she had figured out long ago that Mochi’s manor was far enough away from home to be in a different time zone. The roar of the waterfall to her left was the first sound to greet her when she stood on the warp pad at Mochi’s Manor. The air was cool and arid, it quickly dried the small amount of perspiration the damp Grotto had caused Bea, and she could smell the sweet scent of the pine-like trees that stretched above her. The craggy stone bluffs on both sides amplified the noise of the babbling waterfall.

She stepped off the teleporter. She had been here many, many times before due to the new expansion of her ranch and the help Mochi sometimes needed. And, despite the fact that Mochi had given her free reign over decorating the place, the flashing signs featuring a cartoony Mochi were still up; Bea kind of liked them, actually. They were cute.

She followed the arrows and signs to the floating island, passing through the field where her vacpack was transformed into one of Mochi’s very own design. The faint whir of the augmentation faded as she crossed the wooden bridge leading to the Nimble Valley teleporters and the telecommunications hub. A gentle breeze flowed over the bridge and through her unkempt hair. The trees swayed calmly in the wind

The icon signaling a call was present on the screen as Bea jogged up to it, and she wasted no time in answering.

“Finally.”

Bea smiled in spite of herself when Mochi appeared onscreen, dark brown eyes crinkled with mirth, arms crossed and one hip jutted out. A breeze pulled at her hair, done up like it usually was, dark black strands pulled back in a simple ponytail behind meticulously cut bangs and strands that framed her face.

“I’ve been waiting on you for what feels like forever,” Mochi’s gruff impatient lilt was offset by the good-natured smirk on her face. "It’s about time.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Bea said, slightly sheepish in her faint southern drawl. She did feel bad for making her wait, Mochi did say that whatever she had was time sensitive after all, but her sleeping in was unprecedented. She didn’t even get around to collecting the plorts that she needed to, she realized with a slight huff. “I’ve just… had a rough go of it lately, I guess.”

Mochi’s face instantly dropped the mocking facade. Her eyes softened and her crossed arms raised in concern. Bea saw her step closer to the camera.

“Where have you been?” the question lacked the biting hiss of a business acquaintance asking for time’s sake. Her pink, wind chapped lips pursed into a small pout. Then, a sneer took the soft look’s place. “You look awful.”

Loud laughter burst out of Bea. The force of it took hold of her whole body, making her lean on her vacpack for support as she shoulders shook. Now her hair was really obstructing. She dropped her vacpack, freeing both her hands to try and part the curtain of mint green surrounding her face and trying to get in her mouth.

By the time she had looked up, Mochi’s face had considerably darkened.

“I was on a mission that went horribly.” She said with a smile, straightening. In hindsight, the whole thing was a little funny, but she had still made a mental note to put a teleporter or two in the Moss Blanket.

Mochi, now with tightly folded arms and finger less gloved hands clenching the sleeves of her purple and black jacket, was silent for a second, thick eyebrows furrowed and lips pressed together in a tight line.

“I’m fine, Mochi, honestly,” Bea’s voice was soft and she gave her her best winning smile. Toothy and goofy, the grin was accentuated by her scrunched nose and eyes. “Didn’t even mess up my face too bad.”

She could tell that this swayed Mochi because her eyebrows relaxed and the lines on her forehead disappeared. Mochi snorted.

“If you say so, Bea,” the teasing cadence was back. Mochi regained her composure and finally uncrossed her arms in favor of a more confident stance. Her hands were now on her hips, resting them on the top of her black cargo pants, and her head was high. “So, long story short, I have a huge backorder of silver plorts right now, and,” she interrupted, holding a finger up even though Bea made no signs of interrupting herself, “before you say anything, the shortage of plorts was totally not my fault. Something stupid went on with my containment center, and the fuse box shorted out and it lost its electrical current. So all the plorts I had saved up are gone now, and this is where you come in!”

Bea already started to regret going there.

“Before you say no like an idiot, I’ll tell you why accepting this job would be one of the greatest things to ever happen to you.

“As you know,” Mochi began with the practiced, professional tone of a businesswoman, “I’ve been thinking about expanding the Miles Tech industry to include other ranchers. Of course, from what I’ve seen so far, you’re the only other person on this miserable rock that has the chops to keep up with me. I was wondering if you’d want to be the first Far, Far Range Miles business associate outside of the family. This would be our first deal as… partners.” Mochi became more and more bashful and sounded less practiced as her pitch went on, even more so when Bea made no efforts to cut her off. Mochi had to spit her last word out and refused to look at Bea. Bea didn’t answer immediately, and she could see the panic in Mochi’s eyes. She watched silently, startled as Mochi looked down. One hand clasped around her neck as she looked offscreen, she rapidly mumbled, “Listen, I know it’s a lot to ask, but this client is a really big deal, and-”

“As long as it’ll help you out, I’d love to,” Bea said simply. Mochi’s head snapped up.

“It, it wouldn’t just be helping me!” she exclaimed. “I’d split the profits more evenly among us, and I’d make sure to take into account all the time you’re spending away from your own ranch. Don’t make it sound like I’m taking advantage of you!”

Bea found herself laughing again. Mochi was downright flustered, her hands again bunched up into fists. Bea put her hands up in front of her.

“I didn’t mean for it to sound like that at all. I know you’ve brought up the prospect of being partners before, and I honestly would love the extra cash,” that part was true. The markets hadn’t been doing too hot lately, “But I’d really just like the chance to get my name out there. Helping a wider range of people and all that,” she picked up and shifted her vacpack over her shoulder, putting a hand on her hip and looking at the screen head-on, “Mochi, I’d love to be partners.”

Mochi looked momentarily thunderstruck. Then, she scoffed.

“Of course you’d make this into some sappy thing about saving people.”

However, not even the most scathing backpedaling could hide the small smile creeping on her face.

Bea smiled easily, “Alright, alright. Are we going to talk business now or later?” Her question prompted a hurried look from Mochi towards something off screen, and Bea guessed it would be later.

“I’m, uh, actually kind of in a pickle here right now. I can try blocking out some time later...” a cacophony of chicken clucks and other sounds, not unlike those Bea often heard on her own ranch, sounded out on Mochi’s end.

She disappeared offscreen quickly, the sound of her vacpack firing off and the gloop of slimes hitting the ground resonating with her disappearance.

“How about I come visit you?”

A faraway voice quickly yelled, “Yeah sure that’d-” but suddenly cut itself off with almost comical timing.

Suddenly, she was back on screen, her face taking up the entirety of the camera’s view. A look Bea could only describe as absolutely baffled was plastered on Mochi’s face. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah, I mean,” Bea could now feel her face getting hot for some reason. The question had slipped out, completely unchecked. Even though it seemed like a perfectly reasonable solution, Bea felt like she had just broken some unspoken oath between the two of them. Especially with the way Mochi was looking at her with her wide, dark, incredulous eyes; it made her feel small. She leaned her vacpack on the ground again. She removed her gaze from the screen and relocated it to her hand fiddling with her belt buckle. Her cargo shorts were suddenly very interesting. “You know what, nevermind. We can arrange something later. I’m free-”

“No! I mean, no, it’s fine,” it was Bea’s head’s turn to snap up. Mochi’s embarrassment was completely transparent then. Cheeks red and her mouth drawn into a thin line yet again, she seemed to struggle with getting the words out. “I’ll… I’ll arrange for a drone to install another warp pad on the manor,” her tone changed in an instant, supposedly trying to regain some of her dignity with the use of a no-nonsense air. She crossed her arms again, looking down at the camera with her nose in the air. “In the meantime, though, you’ll have to start getting those plorts for me.”

Bea’s head was reeling. She was caught somewhere between bouncing around in excitement because _Oh my god I’m going to finally see another person for the first time in almost three years!!_ and between being mortified because _Oh, my god, I’m going to see another person for the first time in three years._ In the midst of her mental freakout, she somehow managed to get out the question of how many plorts Mochi actually needed.

“Fifteen hundred.”

“In how much time?”

“The deadline is next month, but I can probably push it back a few weeks if I really need to,” Mochi smiled. She was back to her normal position in front of the hub. “Time being different here and all.”

Fifteen hundred plorts in thirty days. Gods.

“I know it’s a lot, but... I really appreciate it, Beatrix.”

Mochi was backed up now, the entirety of her body back in the camera’s view, and one hand clasped her opposite bicep. She looked sheepish and embarrassed, and Bea could tell that she was being genuine.

“It’s no problem, Mochi.”

They were quiet for a moment. The breeze returned again. Somehow, Bea hadn’t even noticed that the rest of the world seemed to be standing still as their conversation progressed. She started feeling uncomfortable. She didn’t know what else was to be said, and, instead of babbling and making things even more awkward than they already were, she chose to run her fingers through her tangled hair.

All of a sudden, Mochi spoke out.

“Oh, and Bea?

“I really like your hair like that.”

* * *

 

Bea was on her second or third run around the more complex terrain in the Nimble Valley, steadily gaining more and more plorts. She had obtained more small injuries from the electrically charged slimes during her rounds, but she knew it was nothing that a quick trip to the med station and some good rest couldn’t fix.

The timer ticked down and she reached the final stretch. She hectically shot electrical charges at the shimmery, metallic slimes darting across the ground, and the tinny noises of Miles tech collecting the quicksilver plorts reverberated off the rocky bluffs of the Nimble Valley.

The buzzer sounded and Bea remained victorious. She held a whopping 219 plorts in her vacpack from the combined runs of the complex and simpler track.

 _Only 1,281 plorts to go,_ she thought with a groan.

But, for now, she had to rest. While she was a hardy person, she could only take so many beatings, and the generators had to recharge. Also, she did have her own ranch to get back to. She quickly found her way back to the teleporter to the manor, wasting no time to dawdle in the temptingly crisp and sweet air of the Nimble Valley.

Her limbs felt significantly better that day than the previous one, even with the added pummelling. The long overdue rest cured most ailments that her first aid couldn’t, and she was much better off because of it. She felt spry, limber, and only a little bit bruised as she made the trip back to the manor to deposit the quicksilver plorts.

She had thrown herself completely and utterly into her work to try to avoid thinking after the ordeal with Mochi. Without the distraction, though, she was left only with her thoughts as the deposited plorts thunked into the receptacle.

Inside, she was torn. An unimaginable excitement fueled the one side: she had been on the Range for almost two and a half years by then, and she hadn’t physically seen or been with another human being for technically three and a half if you counted the year-long trip it took to get there. She was ashamed to admit it, but she really missed the physicalities of being with someone. To think she, Beatrix LeBeau, went through every rigorous task the ETAC threw at her, excelled in everything (including the mandatory simulated six month isolation period, where she was only in the simulation for six minutes but was subjected to the realities of the minimum timeframe for a rancher to be deployed), and was getting ecstatic over the mere prospect of getting to see someone else. But, it had been nearly three years, and it was natural for a human to crave accompaniment, wasn’t it?

On the other side, however, she was terrified of what would happen. She had kept her social skills sharp through the use of StarMail and the ranch exchange, so it wasn’t total and complete isolation she had gone through, but she was worried still. It was also natural for one to be fearful of something they have been so long removed from, wasn’t it?

Wasn’t it?

She finally realized that she had run out of plorts to give.

She shifted her blank gaze the call control panel. It gave no sign that Mochi was near, and Bea wasn’t surprised. It was completely dark at the manor now, which meant that Mochi was more than likely either working through the night or sleeping. Either way, Bea felt that she shouldn’t bother her.

She shifted her gaze again, this time towards the night sky. The moon was rising in the dark sky, just like it had the night before. Stars shone out in whites and blues in the deep blue space around it, and the rays of the moon itself gleamed down on the clouds below. Small auroras, an incredible spectacle Bea still hadn't gotten used to, came and went too. Yellow light from the swaying lanterns hanging above her cast light over her that left her brown skin more of an umber color. She watched idly by, her vacpack dropped back down to her side, as firefly-like creatures floated purposefully and stars fell from the cosmos over her. The air started to cling to her as a mist began to rise from the sea. The breeze carried on. She could still hear the unrelenting waterfalls behind her.

A yearning feeling rose in her chest, and she did her best to squash it like she had countless times before.

It didn’t work as well as she wanted it to.

* * *

 

When she got back to the ranch, she went about cleaning up the plorts she had meant to that morning. It was quick and easy work, she only had the Grotto and the Lab to take care of, and she soon found herself yet again without a distraction. That was when she realized there was still the icon of an unread StarMail on her coordinator.

She was desperate for a diversion from her busy mind, and she decided to go see what it was. The day was younger over on her part of the Range, the sun still in the last stages of setting and the weather still warm. She knew she probably had other chores to do in her expansions, but it was just a quick jog over to the house.

The door to the house clacked open and shut quietly. The rosy hues of the sunset were shining through the room, highlighting the floating dust particles like they had that morning and painting the room a calming gold.

Bea quietly slid into the chair at her desk. The undeterred nervous energy coursing through her made her leg bounce, a nervous habit that had stuck with her since her childhood. Sure enough, a flashing _You’ve got mail!_ notification was present on her screen.

As she passed it that morning, she had thought nothing more of the thing. But now, facing the sender, she was struck mute.

**_A big deal_ **

_Casey_

 

_Hi Bea,_

_I know it’s been awhile since we talked, and I know that we aren’t really talking that much anymore, but I have some really big news._

_You remember that tour I said we had coming up a while back? I just got back home from that. I was right about feeling like it was the big one. We got signed! I finally have a record label interested in us._

_I probably won’t be responding for a while if you want to get in touch again, the next few months are extremely packed for me. I just figured you’d like to know. You were always our number one fan when we were struggling, and I’d like you to know that I always appreciated your support. I hope you found whatever you were looking for up there like I did down here._

_\- Casey_

 

Bea released her clenched jaw. She remembered her father had always telling her that she was the worst when it came to negative emotions, always stowing them away to hopefully to never be dealt with again. That was partly why she had been so busy the past few (maybe it wasn't just a few) months. Casey often crossed her mind when she was idle, which spurred even more work done with weathered hands and tired feet. A whole other whirlwind of emotions had run its course as she read the short email, and she wiped away a stray tear that she felt foolish for shedding.

She had long accepted that she and Casey couldn’t live together and be truly happy, that was plain enough to see just by where they both wanted to be, but she could never look past the emotions that her previous relationship wrought with rationale alone. Casey had been her first love, and Bea was guessing her last one too, at least for a while. She had shared more with her than she had with anyone. It was hard to accept that it was completely gone.

But they had both made a decision. Bea couldn’t keep stringing her along, and Casey couldn’t keep hanging on for someone a thousand light years away.

Casey wanted to explore a different world than Beatrix did. So they parted, not on bad terms, but it had ended nonetheless. So she bundled those emotions away too.

**_Re: A big deal_ **

_Beatrix LeBeau, Casey_

 

_That’s really awesome Casey. You’ll have to send me some of your music when it gets released. Although, I don’t appreciate the past tense. I will always be your guys’ number one fan. :-)_

_I’m really happy that you found what you were looking for. I hope you have the time of your life with this agency and that you meet a lot of interesting people along the way._

 

Bea struggled with what to end it with. She typed and deleted many things, among them _love, sincerely,_ and  _yours_ , but none of those felt right anymore. She didn’t mean that to her anymore.

So instead, she simply wrote:

 

_I hope to hear from you soon._

_Bea_

 

With that, she set out to find yet another distraction from the complex mix of feelings inside her, and the evening wore on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping my idea about Mochi's and all the other ranchers' ranches being kind of close to Bea's but far enough for a slight time difference makes sense. I've always kind of considered the range exchange to be just the ranchers surrounding you since it's come off as there are tons and tons of ranchers on the Range. In Mochi's manor's case, the difference is only an hour.  
> I also elected to make Casey female in this despite Casey not having a confirmed gender. When I first played the game, I always thought of the character as female, and that's how I'm going about it in this fic.
> 
> I'm hoping to keep the update schedule as every Saturday or so. It may take longer to put chapters out soon, what with it being finals season and all, but I'm hoping that the longer chapters are worth the longer wait.
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed!


	3. Daily Grind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning, there's a mention of Bea's parents dying in this chapter. Nothing graphic but I figured a warning is warranted if the parent death tag wasn't enough.

Sat down on the stoop in front of her house, she watched as the dark blues of early dawn faded into glorious pinks and purples, clouds drifting away with the wind. Chilly dawn air bit at Bea’s bare forearms and calves, and she clutched her light blue blanket and steaming cup of tea closer to her. The cloud of vapor warmed her face, exposed to the cold breezes, as it wafted upwards. Tea was a special request she had to make from the 7Zee company in her yearly supply drop, one of the ten extra commodities they allowed, so she only used it for particularly chilly days and nights.

Her hair was pulled up again, though she never did manage to find the hair tie that had disappeared in her bed, and her ears were numb. As she moved to better cover her exposed calves, the wind blew a little harder from behind her. She was left to wonder why on earth she had even decided to come out here.

It had been a few days since she and Mochi had struck up their deal, and she was steadily working towards the quota Mochi had set. True to her word, Mochi had started giving Bea a higher percentage of the plort price; she made 40 newbucks per plort now, which was twice as much as she used to give her. It had been fairly manageable balancing both her own ranch and the twice-daily comings and goings back and forth to the Nimble Valley, but she found herself to be exhausted most days.

Mochi hadn’t been around much those past few days. The drones she promised hadn’t come around yet. Bea mostly just chalked it up to Mochi being busy, though she worried about her fellow rancher’s wellbeing. She found herself hoping that the woman wasn’t pushing herself too hard.

The hot tea stung her tongue slightly while she sipped away. She had requested a variety pack from 7Zee- _Choose from over 3,000 brew-tea-ful varieties!_ \- and had gotten a lovely Darjeeling blend in the mix. The fruity and floral taste washed over her, warming her from the inside out. She cupped her bare hands over a mug with the 7Zee logo emblazoned on it, her gloves folded beside her on the ground next to her gear.

She listened quietly while the world moved around her. The gentle plops of bouncing slimes were present all throughout her ranch, and there was no different. She had everything done on her side of the Range and planned on spending most of the upcoming day running with the slimes over in the Nimble Valley as she had yesterday.

She didn’t sleep the night before. Of course, with technology by 7Zee, the ranchers didn’t technically need sleep. She was grateful for the help, after all, 7Zee's caffeine supplements had saved her ass a few times when she hadn’t met her monthly plort quota, but she liked to sleep. There was something she missed when she kept working for days on end aided only by the supplements, and she usually decided to turn in for the night if nothing too pressing was happening. But Bea hadn’t taken a supplement that night. Mochi’s situation wasn’t as desperate as not filling the monthly quota in Bea’s opinion, and she was never one to be frivolous in the consumption of supplies, on the ranch or off. Rather, the night had stretched on without her notice.

The Nimble Valley was enticing in almost every aspect. Everything about it appealed to her. From the utter silence to the cool temperatures, it reminded her of the forests of her childhood vacations. Those that held the trees which planted the seeds of an adventurer in the young girl, and had instilled in her a sense of curiosity that went on to shape almost every aspect of her life.

Her small, blistered hands had grasped the branches of giant pine, apple, peach, and birch trees countless times. Trees had been her haven during long, boring vacations to her aunts’ and uncles’ farms, where there was little else for young ‘uns to do besides help in the kitchen during dinner and tend to animals. She had even taken up an interest in dendrology for a short bit in her early teen years, but it didn’t take root as deep as her obsession with the cosmos did. Many a hot southern summer afternoon had been spent with an identification book from the box of free books at the bookstore in her lap, her trying to spot the different types of trees that grew around where she had perched for the day.

She didn’t know what it was about trees that had taken her fancy. Maybe their fruit or the climbing challenges they offered in their branches, but the hobby had faded as she grew older. She had taken up gem collecting, a passion her mother’s sister shared, soon after, and a quick succession of nature-loving hobbies followed.

She saw the same peacefulness of those orchards and forests mirrored in the Nimble Valley. The strangely deciduous leafed pine-like trees, the whimsical magneticore arrays that still baffled Bea in how they could possibly be natural, the floating islands decorated with chunks of protruding silver, all of it drew the feeling of wonder the trees in her books had evoked from her childish heart.

She had also been distracted by her work and by the subsequent electrocution that would occur if she let her attention stray.

Her nose wrinkled and sniffed as another cold wind blew through. She thought of maybe blowing work off for the day in favor of curling up with her plushie and watching a movie or two on her computer, but the time restraint once again entered her mind and the gnawing worry of not getting done on time filled her.

Yet, at the same time, she dreaded the thought of leaving her warm shelter of blankets.

She finished downing the last of her tea, the dredges pooling at the bottom, and she sat a moment longer. As she soaked up the last remnants of warmth from the mug, she looked around the ranch.

The sun wasn’t quite up yet. Peachy tones still permeated the sky and stars were still visible through the dawning color. She noticed the calling sign of a fellow rancher in need at the Range Exchange, but she had decided to forgo favors after her and Mochi’s agreement. There was too much work to be done.

She exhaled slowly, she was at least thankful that the air wasn’t cold enough to see her own breath, and stood. Still clutching the blanket over her shoulders, she set her mug down on the short brick wall to her left, sure to not leave it too close to the edge. She had noticed that her dervish slimes had been more agitated lately, and while a temper tantrum was unlikely with a feeder full of prickle pears, she hesitated to leave her mug out in the open.

But, again, there was work that needed doing and plorts that needed collecting. She decided she would take her blanket with her to work, just in case it was as chill over in the Nimble Valley as it was there. She leaned over and grabbed her gloves and gear up from the dirt.

The trip to the manor was shorter than usual, intentionally so since Bea’s calves were still breaking out in a mass of goosebumps, and when she stepped off of the teleporter she was relieved to find the sun shining and rising in the sky in Mochi’s part of the world.

Clouds hung low over the Slime Sea. The sky was a bright blue around the morning sun, though it blurred into a haze as it stretched towards the horizon. The soothing rumble of waterfalls and the ocean were present as always. Chicken clucks were also present here, mostly due to Bea running out of space in her coops and not having the heart to just punt them into the ocean. She let them have free reign of the manor while she devised a plan concerning what exactly she should put there. She was already wearing herself thin, so the only things she had managed to put in place were a few decorations, mostly glow sticks from her part of the Ruins and magneticore arrays, puddle slimes, and chickens.

Lots and lots of chickens.

She took a right into the entrance to the Nimble Valley ports. She could feel her goosebumps subsiding while she soaked up the sun’s warm rays, and she loosened her grip on her blanket.

_It’s showtime._

A quick jog over to the teleporters was all it took before Beatrix was back on the clock, blanket still wrapped around her shoulders.

The weather in the Nimble Valley was cool and dry as usual, though it wasn’t chilly, thankfully. She walked up to the button operating the massive generator and dropped her makeshift cloak. She took off running as soon as her hand smacked the button, hoping to get a head start and a few static shocks stored in her pack before the quicksilver slimes popped up.

She spent the next few hours chasing and shooting electric food at quicksilver slimes, steadily gaining the precious resource she was after. Time seemed to pass differently as she ran. Almost slower, it seemed. Static hung in the air and the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end.

Bea was surprised to see the incoming call at the telecommunications hub when she got back.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Beatrix,” The image was still lagging behind the groggy, slightly irritated voice, but Mochi looked downtrodden and tired when her visage finally appeared on the screen. Her hair was in dark tangles, and motor oil seemed to be splotched on her jacket. “Listen, I’m just calling to apologize about disappearing for a while. My drones aren’t working right and I’ve been busy working on that. Installing another warp pad probably won’t be doable until a week or so, and I,” her sleepy hooded eyes scrunched up as she yawned, “just figured you should know.”

Bea stayed silent, debating whether or not she should voice her concern, whether it was warranted.

“You should get some sleep,” she said softly, shifting her blanket and gear in her arms.

“Oh, whatever  _mom_.” With that, the screen went dark. Bea stood, staring at the darkened screen for only a moment before rolling her eyes. That was a resounding _no_ , she guessed.

She went back to her work. The day passed quickly after that, and the little worker bee continued diligently towards her goal.

While multitasking to such a degree was exhausting, the money was a plus. She was grateful for the extra cash, and she had considerably more fun chasing quicksilvers around the Valley than she had going back and forth doing tedious tasks on her own ranch. Not that she was slacking on her own duties, oh no, she would never, but she had known ever since Mochi had scratched her back with her extra mile that a partnership was a wise decision.

What Bea planned on doing with said money, she didn’t know. She wasn’t sending anything back to Earth after she stopped talking to Casey (sometimes ends were just too hard to bring together at the end of the month, and Bea didn’t find parting with a couple hundred newbucks to be too hard) and it had just been piling up since. At the rate she was going, she would save her first million before her twenty-fourth birthday.

Sometimes she found herself missing the luxuries of the Earth she had left behind, but she knew that she would never want again if she ever went back. She was making money that would have been impossible for her to make back on Earth, her yearly salary, depending on the markets that year, usually on par with that which a CEO would make.

Going back to Earth was something she had thought many times about. While going back was costly and a hassle, most ranchers were pulled by the companies they were with after six or twelve months. Bea and the ranchers surrounding her were exceptions to this rule.

7Zee owned most of the land on the Far, Far Range, and few other companies had managed to stake claims on the strange world before it was commercialized by the megacorporation. Bea learned that her island continent and those surrounding her were owned by 7Zee before she went to the Range, but 7Zee didn’t manage every aspect of what went on on the planet.

Ogden had used his own money to come out to the Range, Bea had found out after a few months of comradery with the older man. 7Zee made no profit off of him aside from the rent they collected from his property. Everything he made off of plorts was his to keep.

Thora and Hobson were ranchers of another time and had simply stayed because they were so valuable to the company as veterans. They were often the first to reach out to new ranchers, and they had plenty of wisdom to spare, which Bea was sure had saved many an inexperienced newcomer.

Viktor was an irreplaceable scientist. His mind and his skills were unparalleled back on Earth, and Bea had read about him in countless magazines and scientific diaries. She had had some conversation with him during her tenure as a rancher thus far, but what little he told her about how he ended up on the lonely space rock with the rest of them summed up to be that he felt like his talents weren’t being totally utilized back on Earth. Bea guessed she could understand; there was a very limited amount of slime science that could be achieved on Earth due to the unique nature of the slimes and the land they inhabited.

BOb was… well, BOb was just BOb.

The one she knew the least about, though, was the very girl who she talked the most to. Bea had gleaned that life back on Earth was a strict no-go zone in conversation, and she was more than happy to comply with Mochi’s aversion to the topic. Most of the time those conversations, in her experience with other ranchers, always lead to a melancholic aftermath on her part at least.

She never tried to make speculations about what Mochi was there to do after the small episode that occurred during their first deal together.

_“That’s got to be the reason no one ever answers. I mean, it’s just so far away, right?”_

She was grateful for the stipulation because it meant she never had to talk about Casey either.

She returned to her house with the sun setting behind her, carrying her folded blanket in the crook of her left arm after a long day of work. Her shoulders and legs ached slightly with the fruit of her labor, but what else was new? Heavy eyes and a tired mind pressed her to not pull another all-nighter, and she looked forward to curling up in her home after a quick once-over of the ranch.

A quick run through the Docks and the Overgrowth reassured her that her dervishes had indeed not been successful in knocking foreign plorts into their neighboring corrals. There were no Tarr outbreaks, no severely lacking feeders, and no overflowing plort collectors, which meant that she could finally rest. Even if just for a short while.

And rest she did. As soon as she stepped through the threshold of her little home she threw off her jacket, untied her bandana, hung up her gear, and toed off her shoes. She stretched her bare toes over the cold concrete floor and approached her computer yet again.

She laid her blanket on the chair, draping the edges over the arms and the back of it, and quickly padded over to her bed to snatch up her pink slime plush. The weight was comforting as she held it; the light styrofoam beans insides shifted when she moved it, an intentional design to make the toy appear as gelatinous as its real life counterpart. The scratchy sound ceased when Bea settled in the chair. She wrapped herself in her blanket after grabbing the mouse, and she covered her shoulders, torso, and little friend.

She could remember the day she had gotten the toy as if it were yesterday. Gifted by an aunt on her father’s side after the accident, if she remembered correctly. She had so many aunts and uncles it was hard to keep track who went with which side of the family. But it was an incredible gesture considering the frugal nature of her family on both sides because funds were not spent casually for silly things like this. And even though Bea was a bit old for toys, the thought of rejecting it never occurred to the then sixteen-year-old. She knew that her extended family felt helpless in the wake of her parents’ passing, and, if she was being completely honest, it brought her a lot of comfort. It was the only reason why she paid extra to bring it with her on her journey to the Range.

The plushy itself was ordinary, one of the millions, even billions mass produced to be sold to starry-eyed children back on Earth, but hers was well-worn with years of use. Jagged stitches were present on almost every side of the toy, produced by Bea’s untrained hand when it got torn, and the fabric that made up the eyes and mouth of the thing had been sown, replaced, and resown time and time again. It was thoroughly loved and had been through a lot, and it had taken a journey many would never get the pleasure of taking.

She quietly scrolled through the list of movies she had downloaded onto a hard drive prior to being shipped out. The notice of deployment was fairly last minute, so she was in a hurry to download things. She took recommendations from everyone. Documentaries were mixed with thrillers, romance was mixed with mysteries, everything was mixed with everything in her unorganized library, and she vowed to go through and create folders for everything if she got an afternoon to herself.

She quickly chose an interesting sounding movie title and settled down, turning up the volume of her speakers. A French film began to play. A romantic one, from the look of it.

She folded her legs up and held the toy in her lap as her fingers rested softly on it. Idly, she worked the fabric beneath her fingers. Sleep tugged at her eyes, and she reclined in her computer chair.

Soothing voices speaking in a tongue she had known vaguely all her life played a soft lullaby while her mind rested. She fell asleep just hoping that Mochi would rest too before she did something stupid.


	4. A Visit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our lone rangers become a little less lonely.

_“Are you scared?”_

_It was dark. It smelled like cloves and cigarette smoke, and thin fingers were intertwined with Bea’s thicker ones. She was warm, though that was mostly because the air conditioner had stopped working in mid-July._

_“Absolutely,” she was hoarse. “I’m so excited at the same time though. This is something I’ve been training for my entire life, but I feel like it’ll be… okay.”_

_A gentle hum from beside her._

_A shift in the cheap linen sheets on their thin mattress._

_“I’ll miss you, you know.”_

_“I’d be a little worried if you didn’t,” she smiled into the darkness enveloping the room. It was noisy, but neither of them noticed. The sounds of the city faded into the background as her life went on in it._

_“Are you sure you want to go? I mean, I know you want to go, but it’s so far…” she grabbed her hand harder as if she would be ripped from her grasp and flung into the cosmos at that very second. Her voice cracked slightly, and she took a drag off a lit cigarette, the only light source in the room aside from the city lights leaking in through behind the curtain. “There’s still time to change your mind.”_

_She was pleading. Bea had seen it, but she wanted to pretend like she couldn’t._

_She should have acknowledged it._

_They laid there, on scratchy sheets in their shitty apartment with an ambulance wailing below. Bea heard the fridge kick on in the other room._

_“You know me better than anyone,” she knew they wouldn’t come back from this. Not like after Africa. “This is my life’s purpose.”_

_Something went unsaid then, she could tell, and it manifested as a tense silence. There was no coming back from this._

_“I love you, Casey. I just can’t stay here.”_

_She didn’t say it back._

* * *

 

The week that Mochi promised had passed. And so had the week after that. Every time Bea had gone over to the Nimble Valley to do her job, the call button hadn’t popped up on the terminal, and she was getting worried. She even went so far as to call her herself, but there was always no answer. The other rancher hadn’t even popped up on the Range Exchange.

However, after running with the slimes one day, she pressed the call button, dripping in sweat and breathing heavily thanks to the sweet coolness of the Nimble Valley being overwhelmed by a heatwave that day. Sweat dripped from her brow and into her eyes, and she slicked her hair back with it. The hub rang several times, the blipping ellipsis flashing on the screen, and Bea was just about to hang up before an image came in.

What Bea witnessed was a completely different Mochi from the one she saw last time. She looked much better, as in her hair was brushed; there was still motor oil on her jacket, and she was just a tad bit breathless.

“Good news, LeBeau! Being the engineering genius that I am, I fixed everything. Drones will be over later today.”

Bea was hit simultaneously by waves of relief and anxiety. Mochi’s gaze drifted from the camera and down to the papers she held in her grasp as Bea started to deposit her captured plorts.

“And I got in touch with some of my representatives from Earth, and they can get all the legal mumbo jumbo out of the way with ETAC and your lawyers. I just need you to sign some contracts,” Mochi shifted the papers around, and Bea couldn’t help but wonder why exactly her lawyers, the lawyers of one of the biggest companies on Earth, would revert to using paper contracts.

“Alright,” Bea breathed, not wanting to deal with asking Mochi questions right then. She wiped sweat from her forehead yet again and flicked the excess moisture off her hand. “I’ll keep an eye out for those drones.”

Mochi looked up from her shuffling. Bea looked towards her expectantly, slightly swaying with the heat and the force of the vacpack, but was only met with silence as she stared at her.

“How have things… been?” Mochi asked hesitantly. Bea was slightly flattered, but she hoped that she didn’t look too bad- “I mean like the plort collecting. How’s it been.”

Ah, that would explain it.

“It’s been alright. Don’t know if you noticed, but I’ve gotten around a thousand plorts in already. I’ll get the rest in no problem,” Bea pinched the bridge of her nose, wiped away the sweat collecting there, and sighed. Her skin was sticky with humidity and her long cargo shorts were doing very little to quell the heat. Why was it so damn hot?

Mochi hummed distractedly, eyes still trained on Bea’s face. Bea waited patiently.

“And…uhm….what about you? How have you been?” Mochi asked quietly, so quietly Bea almost didn’t catch it. “I’m only asking because I can’t have you passing out on me. You look sweaty. And gross.”

Bea chuckled at that.

“It’s just hotter than usual today, but I’ll survive.” she punctuated the statement with a good-natured wink.

Mochi looked taken aback for a moment as Bea finally emptied her tank. She turned to the camera full on, setting her vacpack down on the ground.

“I’ll keep an eye out for those drones, Moch. I’ve gotta get around to the other range, but I guess I’ll see you later. Literally, this time,” she flashed another smile before turning the terminal off, stomach queasy with the ridiculous nervousness that plagued her. Her stomach almost threatened to upend her lunch (which wasn’t even that grand: a few pogofruits and a couple of steamed Oca Ocas) with the stress, and the heat definitely wasn’t helping, so she decided to take a quick detour to the fountain at the manor.

Her splash into the small stream disturbed peacefully floating chickens. She floated on her back amidst the clucks and scrambled feathers, her hair thankfully staying in its bun. The water felt blissfully cool against her heated skin.

She shouldn’t have been this nervous. She knew that. This was just Mochi she was talking about. Oh, what was she talking about _just_ Mochi, Mochi was a mogul of the slime empire, and she was going to get to work with her, and she means _really_ work with her. And _meet_ her and-

She told herself that she should stop.

The business portion of their deal eventually excited her after some thought, but she was never in the business for the money (it was a huge plus though). Partnering with Miles Corp was something that she never really thought would actually happen, but now that it was, it was quite exciting.

Probably too exciting for a woman who had spent two years doing mostly nothing besides the idle work of farming slimes and exploring land she knew like the back of her hand, but hell, she’d take what she could get.

She felt a chicken splash back into the water with her. She looked with eyes half-lidded in a concoction of mixed emotion to the bird, a Hen Hen, and watched as it paddled around, eyes dumb and unblinking.

When it bumped into her leg, it bawked in surprised and swam away, clucking. The sky drew Bea’s eyes away from the chicken, and she watched at clouds made their way across the beautiful blue sky. She felt her eyes glaze over while she floated there in the beautifully cold spring, trying not to think, and she eventually managed to gather the strength to rise.

She still had another course to run, and she still had plorts to get.

But hours later, when the drones arrived, she couldn’t quell the nervous flutter in her stomach as they went about their work. Automated motors whirred and metal clunked near the front of the manor while Bea sat idly by on the stone surrounding the manor’s fountain.

She had left her gear aside from a small pack at home after she had finished up at the Nimble Valley, and now all she was waiting on were for the absolutely adorable drones (they looked like bees?? How cute was that) to finish their work. She tapped out a small rhythm on the stone beneath her fingers.

She had taken a quick shower before heading back over there, due to the heat and Mochi’s comments, and her bangs were still warm from the blow dry she had to undergo.

Quiet whirs slowly grew even quieter as the drones finished their jobs, and with them, the feeling of anxiety only grew. Bea watched, lips pressed tight together as they finally finished, and the drones took off again to some unknown point on the horizon: towards Mochi’s.

Bea took a deep breath through her nose, exhaling through her mouth. She pulled her legs up to sit cross-legged on the stone rim, staring at the glowing teleporter.

She supposed that the only way to get over herself was to just… do it.

God, she could do this. She knew she could. She was being an idiot.

She paused, holding her breath.

When her legs refused to move on their own, she heaved a sigh.

She was numb as she unfurled her legs and placed her feet on the ground. It was still as hot as it had been earlier, and all Bea wished for was that it was at least slightly cooler over at Mochi’s as she slowly walked up to the teleporter.

Her stomach dropped out from beneath her as she stepped on, no turning back now.

She had never had a trip in a teleporter take so long, and just as she was beginning to worry that something might have gone wrong and she might very well just be dropped in the middle of the slime sea, it stopped.

And suddenly, there she was. No screen to separate them.

It looked like Mochi had been counting on her coming when she did. She had her arms crossed across her torso, stance steady and confident a few feet away from the porter.

And she didn’t say anything.

The silence brought forth an intense awkwardness, and Bea’s stomach was currently trying to churn itself outside of her body. It was almost hard to comprehend a person this close, yet she still couldn’t tear her eyes away from the other woman’s. She could finally see them without the grainy filter of the telecommunications hub, and as the sun beat down on them, it cast them in a gorgeous light, honey brown highlights appearing against dark brown irises. She kept her jaw set but flashed Mochi a quick, toothy smile.

Mochi was the first one to extend a hand between the two.

Which didn’t do anything to help the awkward air between the two of them.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Beatrix LeBeau,” the tone was entirely too formal for Mochi, her teasing lilt was nowhere in sight, and Bea was able to see the no-nonsense businesswoman that the corporation must see.

She nonetheless stepped off and took her hand, which she noticed was quite small in her large grip, and held it firm and fast.

Mochi’s hand was warm. Sparks shot up Bea’s arm as she looked her in the face.

“The same to you, Mochi Miles.”

They held onto each other even after the greeting was done. Bea couldn’t help but notice that small may it be, Mochi’s hand was the furthest thing from weak. Blisters turned callous adorned her fingers and the bridge of her palm, and a strong grip, the result of years of navigating rugged terrain, placed a welcome weight on her hand.

It was gone all too soon.

“Welcome to the Miles Corporation’s branch on the Far, Far Range,” Mochi said, the gloating grandeur of her voice returning slightly as she raised her arms to gesture around her.

Bea finally tore her eyes away from Mochi’s to look around the ranch. She half listened as Mochi told her that, of course, this wasn’t the only section of the ranch, this was just the closest one to the Nimble Valley, and she let herself take in the absolutely enormous ranch spread out around her.

She hated to admit it, but it was no wonder why Mochi always called hers a dump.

Numerous plots were in neat rows, every foot of space taken advantage of. Fruit trees, veggie rows, and the chicken coops of Mochi’s own design were interspersed between corrals. It seemed that most of the largos there were harmless mixes, it was smart on Mochi’s part to not let any explosive or destructive slimes in corrals that close to other slimes, and happy giggles and bouncy noises filled the space in front of the teleporter.

Natural stone walls extended above them, looking very much like Bea’s ranch in that aspect.

The sun was starting to drip down toward the horizon, but it hadn’t fallen below the crest of the rocks just yet.

She turned her gaze back to Mochi only to find that she had started walking away.

An annoyed call died on her tongue, and instead, she ran to catch up with her. Dirt and dry grass crunching under her feet, she felt her boots kick in and aid her legs with the short sprint.

“We’ll be going back to one of my manors near here. I’ve got all the paperwork back there,” Mochi said as Bea struggled to catch up. A drone, larger than the ones Mochi had sent over to Bea’s, passed by them and began to dispense mint mangoes into the auto feeders of a honey-crystal largo corral. “And the teleporter’s close.”

She guided her through even more corrals being taken care of by more drones to a teleporter that led back to a manor that was even grander than the one over by the Nimble Valley. Surrounded by a Dry Reef, the quarters were utterly huge. Floating platforms with darling looking high tech cabins, supported by chunks of magneticore, were scattered above and around the manor as it stretched upward, and large monuments that didn’t look too different from modern art pieces decorated the rolling lawn in front wherever there weren’t fountains present. She noticed that the color scheme was similar to the one over near the Nimble Valley: dark purple against light gray.

Bea was entranced by the grandeur of the place as they stepped inside, as Mochi still hadn’t given her the key to actually get inside the manor over on her expansion, but the genius of designer architects was just as present there as back at Bea’s.

Mochi dropped her off at a small room with a large desk and a stack of papers placed upon it. Windows were tactfully placed to allow the most light in at any given time, and the harsh light from outside was softened as it hit the pastel blue walls and white tile of the room.

“Anything you want to drink?” Mochi leaned with one arm against the doorframe as Bea made her way to her seat.

Bea turned around, “Oh no, I’m fine-”

“I’m getting you water because you still look sweaty, but take a seat. I’ll be right back.”

And so Bea did.

There wasn’t much to see in the room, the desk and chairs pretty much took up all of the floor space, but it was very pretty. Bea wondered if Mochi had any hand in designing the place herself, but she was only left wondering for a moment. Mochi soon returned with a glass of iced water, and Bea took it with a quiet murmur of thanks.

A stack of papers was set out carefully on the table. Mochi’s footsteps were quiet as she took a seat across from Bea, and she slid the stack of papers towards her.

“You can feel free to read through them if you want, but you should know that the Miles Corporation is one hundred percent transparent with our mergers. This contract consists of copyrights to naming, cooperation with ETAC for your salary, agreements for proper compensation in regards to taking time away from your own ranch, blah, blah, blah. Everything for a proper business merger,” Bea took the papers gingerly in her hands, sitting back in her chair to begin reading. In her peripheral, she saw Mochi fold her hands on the desk in front of them, pressing her thumbs together. Mochi pursed her lips, her eyes drifting away from Bea and focusing on some unknown point to the right.

“I heard that,” Mochi paused for a long moment. Bea kept skimming over the first few pages of the contract, “I heard that you ran a shop. Back on Earth. From your lawyers.”

Bea let out a confirming hum, slightly wondering if she should consider this violating their silent agreement to not talk about life before the Range.

“Why?”

Bea looked up, meeting Mochi’s eyes with a small smile playing on her lips. She decided that this kind of conversation wasn’t too bad.

“It’s hard to get a good job without a lot of connections now,” she said as she moved her gaze back to reading. “I double majored and was exceptional in ETAC, but I still couldn’t find anything. The job market has kind of gone to… crap since you left. The population keeps climbing and exceptional minds aren’t as exceptional anymore. I was just lucky to snag Hobson’s ranch, and even then, the only way I managed that was a close relationship with the drafting officer.”

Mochi moved her hands to form a bridge as she set her elbows on the table. She set her chin on her bridged hands. Bea could feel her gaze on her face as her eyes kept scanning the contract.

“What kind of shop was it?”

“A little plant shop. I lived above it with…”

She decided then that bringing up Casey was definitely violating the agreement, at least on her part.

“A roommate. Rent was insane, but it was in a decent place in the city. I got quite a bit of business for being such a niche thing,” she really shouldn’t have been talking while reading, she wasn’t very good at multitasking in that regard, but even if she didn’t want to admit it, talking about something even so mundane was exciting. Slimes never made for good conversation.

She’d just finished reading a clause about salaries when she decided to look up again, the feeling of eyes on her too strong to not.

Mochi was looking at her, and although it was brief, the eye contact burned Bea’s cheeks and made her look back down to the scramble of words in front of her.

She quickly scanned a paragraph, realized that she hadn’t absorbed any of it, and had to start back over.

She felt like a damned socially awkward high schooler blushing with just a bit of eye contact. Maybe she had been away from people for too long.

“Well, why’d you want to come here then?”

Bea took a moment, stopped in the middle of a clause about copyrights now, and thought. She knew that that question would take hours to thoroughly answer, so she decided to just shorten it down to:

“I’ve wanted to come here since I was a kid. Ever since they taught us about it in kindergarten, really,” she shifted to cross one of her legs up on her knee, resting the papers against her scarred calf. Mochi huffed, crossing her arms and leaning back in her seat. She idly checked her nails as she let the conversation die.

Bea sighed as she got to the back of the contract. She had glanced over everything, but the contract was surprisingly short. She saw enough to know that everything was in order and that most loopholes had been covered by her own lawyers. And if she were being honest, she trusted Mochi, whether it was a good idea or not. She set the papers down on the desk and reached over to grab a pen from the cup beside Mochi. Her signature was a scribbled mess, a B, L, and another B the only discernible letters in it, and she slid the signed papers back to her.

Mochi took them silently, setting them off to the side and suddenly they were back to square one.

“Soooo,” Bea took a sip of her cold water, condensation collecting on the glass, and sat up straight. She was reminded of her manners, good ol’ southern hospitality as her mother called it, and she smiled yet again at the woman across from her. “Your ranch is really amazing, Moch,” she set her glass back down on the desk, “What do you do for fun around here?”

At that, Mochi quickly stood up.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I’m making some food. It’d be nice if you helped.”

Although she was surprised that she didn’t acknowledge her praise, Bea helped her manage to fit a meal for two into both their packs, and if Bea were being honest, it was a better meal than she had made for herself in a long time. Lately, she found herself turning to the flash frozen crap 7Zee sent to them in the drops more often, but Mochi really went the extra mile. Real meat from her chickens and fresh vegetables made for an awesome lunch. As she finished up making a quick sandwich with cooked chicken and cheese on it, Bea thought to herself that she should come over more often.

As they left the manor and Bea followed her to wherever it was they were going, Mochi made it abundantly clear that _no_ , this wasn’t going to be a “picnic” and _yes_ , of course she did this all the time.

Cool air fell over the lands as the sun set behind large stone outcrops and as the sky was streaked with warm colors. They passed through the metal arch at the opening of Mochi’s ranch (complete with a holographic sign displaying an identification number) to an open field of slimes.

“Follow me.”

The expanse outside the ranch looked a lot like the dry reef over at Bea’s. She felt the evening rays of sunshine beat down on the back of her neck as their shadows stretched out in front of her and they crunched what little dry grass there was beneath them.

Shade fell over them as they passed under a natural stone outcrop. Mochi quickly sidestepped a barreling rock slime and took a few light, careful jumps up an angled portion of a rocky cliff. She disappeared over the lip of the stone formation, and Bea had to dodge the friendly rock slime before it bashed into her.

Mochi’s head popped back over the lip, hair swaying upside down and earrings dangling.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” a signature roll of the eyes and scoff followed her question, and she flipped back over. A shouted “Get up here!” echoed off the stone above Bea.

Bea took a running start at the incline and jumped, her jetpack whirring and propelling her forward until she managed to seek purchase on the rough orange rock. Pebbles fell as she scrambled up and grabbed the lip of stone.

She pulled herself up with relative ease. The stone was warm and dusty beneath her fingertips as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. A breeze flowed freely up there, and her bangs fluttered with the gentle wind.

The slime sea was just below them. Bea could hear the gelatinous waves hit the cliffs as she swung her legs over the edge, and a water bottle was thrust rather harshly into her shoulder.

“Here,” Mochi handed off the bottle and settled down on a rock a few feet away from the edge. She pulled out her own lunch, the same as Bea’s, and began to unwrap it. Bea did the same, scooting back away the ledge and taking a spot next to Mochi.

The sandwich was delicious as she bit into it. She had been running on nothing but fruits and the occasional vegetable that day, too busy to bother cooking anything as she was preoccupied with the Nimble Valley. She set the water bottle down on the dirt next to her.

They ate in silence for a moment. Shadows stretched even further on the surface of the slime sea.

“Do you make all your own food?” Bea broke the silence, taking a break from her sandwich to try and grab a carrot stick from her bag.

Mochi took a drink.

“I try to. I can’t stand that 7Zee crap.”

Bea hummed, crunching down on a carrot.

It went on like that for awhile, small questions gaining small answers until they got onto the topic of their fellow ranchers.

“They’re so cheesy. They act all lovey-dovey whenever I have to talk to Thora outside the exchange,” Mochi took a large bite out of her sandwich. She fished around in her plastic baggie for a carrot stick as she quietly munched her food. Bea leaned back on one elbow as she waited for her to finish talking, taking a leisurely bite out of her own sandwich. Mochi swallowed. “It’s like, they’re sickeningly in love.”

Bea made sure to completely finish chewing and then swallowing before she spoke out, “I think they’re cute.”

“How can you think that’s cute?”

“I mean, they’re like a cute old couple. Plus there are eleven billion people on Earth, and they both went to a planet with a population of about 500,000, and they found each other. What even are the odds of finding someone you want to live out your days with on a planet with less than one percent of your original population?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier that way?” Mochi asked through a carrot stick, eyebrow quirked and unconvinced.

Bea thought for a moment. She glanced out over the slime sea, watching as the sun dipped even further and the sky darkened.

“Well… when you’re as cut off as we all are, I feel like having someone close enough to talk to, let alone fall in love with, is amazing. Y’know?”

“Hmm,” Mochi tapped her carrot stick against her lips in consideration, eyes drifting back out toward the sea. “I feel like love doesn’t exist. Not true love. Not their kind of love.”

Bea laughed at that, and she quickly took a drink out of her water bottle, washing the meal down.

“Well, maybe not love at first sight. Love is… hard. But I think their love is real. At least I hope it is, because Hobson isn’t getting his ranch back,” she finished off the last of her water and threw the bottle back in her pack.

Mochi snorted hard.

“You two fighting it out for that dump of a ranch is something I’d pay to see.”

“You always call it a dump, but you’ve never seen it. It actually looks pretty good. Homey,” Bea stretched out on the ground, propping her head up on her arms.

“That’s just what people call their ugly houses when they want other people to like them,” Mochi leaned back on her elbows too, her sandwich finally finished and her carrot sticks in her hand. “If you really insist, though, I’ll come over sometime. I still haven’t even seen what you’ve done with the manor over there,” she side eyed Bea, “I just hope you have better designing sense than an elderly man.”

“Oh boy, you should’ve seen how he left the ranch when I got there. It was bad,” Bea sat up again. Now that she had finished her dinner, she felt content as the night began to roll in, red hues stretching across the sky. “7Zee fixed it up a bit, but I’ve mostly tried to spruce it up with some stuff around the range.”

“Oh, god, you actually gave them money for that stupid rewards club?”

“Hey, what else am I going to buy? It’s not like I can buy anything else,” Bea smiled at her companion as she crumpled up the plastic baggie her sandwich had been in. “I would’ve done it myself, but there isn’t really a home improvement store around here.”

Mochi tucked whatever mean remark she was going to make into her cheek. Bea looked out over the sea as Mochi took another swig of water.

Bea was hit with the question she wanted to ask her earlier.

“Oh, I also wanted to ask if you had anything to do with the designing of your manors. I really like the one you’re letting me look after. The floating cabins were a really nice touch.”

Mochi turned then, watching the rolling waves, the back of her head facing Bea.

“I helped a little bit. Most of the actual building was left to our architects, but I had some sway over what got built. The floating cabins were my idea, by the way. So thank you.”

“Did you know about quicksilvers before you came here?”

“Yeah, it’s been a pretty big thing for the corp. They built the tracks in the valley in preparation for me coming here,” Mochi trailed off. She pulled her legs in close as she sat up and hunched over, still not looking at Bea. "I helped design that too."

Bea paused. She threw the rest of her garbage into her pack, stretching out her legs.

Phosphor slimes were now popping out of the ground, and a chill was starting to set in. Fog lifted off the sea as the sky was overtaken by darkness.

“It really is gorgeous over there,” Bea sighed, following Mochi and looking out over the water. She saw the other woman look at her out of her peripheral. “It reminds me of where I grew up. Lots of trees. Lots of quiet.”

She turned her head to meet Mochi’s eyes, a soft smile playing yet again on her face. All Mochi did in return was lower her eyes back to the captivating waves.

On their way back, phosphor plorts littered the ground and the floating slimes blipped around them. Pink and rock phosphor largos were everywhere to light their way until they ran into the lamps outside of Mochi’s ranch.

They were back at the teleporter way too soon.

“Hey, um…” Bea turned to find that Mochi had stopped in her tracks behind her. She looked like she was struggling to get the words out, and Bea wasn’t sure what she was about to hear. She stopped just short of the teleporter. “You can come over whenever. Of course, I’m usually busy enough to not warrant company, but since we’re… partners... now... I feel like- I mean I-”

The enormous smile spreading across Bea’s face was enough to stop her rambling.

“Thank you, Mochi. I’ll have to take you up on that offer. I’ll let you know when I’m free.”

And Bea turned back around to hop on the teleporter, trying to keep her smile in check as she turned and waved slightly as she disappeared back to her own neck of the woods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for how long this took to get out!! School was crazy as the year wrapped up, and I just kept putting it off. I was determined to upload at least once during pride month though lol. I also made a side blog for Slime Rancher! There isn't much up now but I'm mostly hoping to reblog fanart and maybe put out reminders when I upload. You can find me at phosphor-honey on tumblr!  
> I'm currently trying to prep my future chapters now, so I'm hoping it doesn't take this long again. I'm really grateful for all the kudos and views! I hope you all enjoy.


	5. Liquid Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girls get to drinking and end up knowing a little bit more about each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If the summary didn't give it away, there's drinking in this chapter. Sorry about the long wait! It was a little harder to get the ball rolling on this one, but I'm really excited for the next upcoming chapters, so I'm hoping to get them out faster. Also, thank you all for the kind comments and kudos! They're always very welcome and make my day :)
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

That visit was the first of many to come.

Bea, totally not desperate for company now that she had the option of it, began to go over every time their schedules lined up. Lunches and exploration of Mochi’s properties made up the bulk of their time together, but what Bea really loved was the conversation. Mochi was surprisingly good at not running out of things to talk about, and Bea learned more about the lands so foreign yet so familiar, the finer details of what their partnership was going to entail, and the engineering degree Mochi had pursued as a teenager (that was slightly more impressive than Bea wanted to admit). The deal that had begun their partnership went off seamlessly; 1,500 quicksilver plorts were delivered with no complaint from the buyer (as far as Bea knew, anyway. Mochi was fairly tight-lipped about her clientele).

It was a few weeks after the deal had gone through, and Bea was seated down to lunch with Mochi again. The day was gorgeous: not a cloud in the sky and a temperate breeze that blew through Bea’s hair as they ate.

Bea’s mind wandered as she slowly chewed, enjoying yet another home cooked meal that she helped Mochi make.

“I want to go over to your ranch,” Mochi stated after swallowing a mouthful of her veggie stir-fry. Bea poked at what remained of hers with her fork.

“Now?”

“Why not? If you don’t have any issues with it, my drones can carry the workload for a few hours.”

Bea looked out over the meadow full of honey slimes below her. Mochi’s choice of location for lunch today was in a fairly green portion of her ranch; it was nowhere near as wild as the Moss Blanket, but still green and filled to the brim with honey and boom slimes.

She squinted against the afternoon sun.

“Yeah. Why not,” she turned and looked at Mochi as she was packing up her things. She strapped her gear on and started to walk away. “I have some emails I need to answer, anyway.”

“Well, hurry up and get a move on,” short as terse as always, Mochi didn’t even turn to look at Bea as she gathered her own meal remnants.

She was still shoving the bowl she used into her pack as she ran after Mochi. Mochi took those long, sure strides of hers as they teleported to the part of her ranch that held the teleporter to Bea’s, and all Bea could do was keep up.

Mochi went through first, and after a moment of precautionary wait time, Bea stepped on too. The long ride was still unsettling to her, and she didn’t want to risk shorting out the tech even with Mochi’s assurances that there was no possible way for it to “screw up”. The last thing she needed was to be dropped in the middle of the slime sea, too far away from home for the emergency drones to come to fish her out.

She was anxious for no reason, of course, because the ride panned out peacefully and uneventfully, even if disturbingly long. The ride over to her own ranch panned out the same way, and once she was back on her own land, she looked around the Grotto for Mochi. The air was damp and very dark, but with the light from her phosphor largos, which she made sure had plenty to eat with a quick run around to check the feeders, she could see that Mochi was nowhere to be found. With a sigh, Bea concluded that there were only two ways for Mochi to go and took the way back to the main portion of the ranch.

The ranch was calm as Bea stepped into the sunshine and clear air, and she saw her standing impatiently by one of the corrals, arms crossed and toe tapping.

“It’s a wonder you ever get anything done in there,” Mochi rolled her eyes as Bea approached. “It’s dark as hell. Is that what took you so long?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re impatient?” Bea asked when she came to a stop. The only response she got was a scowl, but she said, “I still don’t totally trust you when it comes to that warp pad,”

Bea stuck her tongue out quickly while she walked past to get to the house. Mochi fell in beside her, following her up the wooden steps and looking indignant.

“You should,” she huffed. “I would never send you through something that I was worried would screw up.”

Bea led her to the house. A wave of cool air hit them as the a.c. kicked on, and Bea gestured towards the large main room.

“Make yourself at home,” she said as she approached her computer. “I know it’s not much, but it’s home.”

Mochi regarded the place with crossed arms for just a moment before an unimpressed huff left her. She uncrossed her arms and walked across the room. Bea dropped into her computer chair and set to reply to the monthly check up emails from her supervisor.

Bea saw Mochi pick up the pink slime plushie atop the heap of blankets on her unmade bed out of the corner of her eye.

“This is really all that 7Zee provides to its ranchers?” Mochi asked, and it took Bea a moment to realize that she was talking about the house and not the plushie.

“They don’t really have a lot of money they’re willing to blow on ranchers,” Bea mumbled as she scrolled disinterestedly through her mail, her cheek resting against her closed fist. “It’s not bad, though.”

She could almost hear Mochi tuck her remark into her cheek. Mochi got up off of Bea’s bed and made her way back over towards the door.

“You mind if I change while we’re here?” Bea asked. She wondered how they could still get spam all the way out here, but she guessed where there’s a will, there’s a way.

“It’s your house, isn’t it?”

Bea could hear Mochi enter the kitchen, and she decided to go for it. Pulling away from the screen, she hunted down another pair of shorts and a shirt.

She discarded her pants and shirt and threw them down the laundry shoot, and she cursed as her bangs blew back into her face. She’d gotten her pants on by the time she saw Mochi enter the room again out of the corner of her eye, a bottle of wine in her fist.

“This any good?” she asked, leaning out of the frame to the kitchen. Her eyes seemed glued to the bottle’s label, and Bea walked over to her to take it and see.

Mochi looked up, and Bea saw her freeze just for a second once her eyes made contact with her bare midriff. Bea didn’t know if Mochi had forgotten or just not understood that she would be mostly undressed when she agreed to let her change, but the look was gone soon. Mochi met Bea’s eyes with an impatient look.

The bottle was cool in Bea’s palm as she looked over the 7Zee label, _You Had Me at Pinot Noir_ , and despite the pun attempt being terrible, it looked fairly good.

“Should be alright,” she shrugged as she handed the bottle back to Mochi. Mochi reached out for it and in the process brushed her fingers against Bea’s. They felt ice cold.

“Wanna get drunk today?”

“It’s only like, three o’clock.”

“It’s five over at mine,” Mochi smiled, slowly swinging the bottle. She took on an oddly endearing and persuasive tone. “Besides, it’s been a while for me. I didn’t think to request any in my last drop.”

She held the bottle up to her face, smiling a rare sweet smile.

“Please?”

Bea knew that that fight was over before it even started.

“Alright. Knock yourself out,” Bea smiled at her before turning to her shirt. She quickly threw it over her head, careful to not pull her hair out of its ponytail holder.

“Don’t be stupid. I can’t drink alone,” Mochi crossed the room and threw herself on Bea’s bed, legs stuck out towards the ceiling before falling back to lay on the sheets, “That’s just sad, and besides, when was the last time you had a drink with a friend?”

Bea smiled at “a friend,” but as she gingerly sat down on the edge of the bed next to Mochi, it turned apologetic.

“I get wine headaches.”

“And we have immediate hangover cures,” wall, Mochi was only half right. Those pills were only meant for emergencies, and they definitely weren’t meant for hangovers. However, the near magical ability of modern medicine to cure any nonfatal ailment immediately was nice, and Bea guessed, yeah, it was an option. “Come ooooon, don’t be a baby.”

“Them’s fighting words,” Bea warned as Mochi heaved herself into a sitting position. “But fine. I’ll drink.” Mochi let out a loud “Atta girl!” but her smile quickly fell as Bea made her pause in her celebration, “I get to choose where we drink, though, and I choose the Grotto.”

Mochi let out a severely displeased noise as she scrunched her eyes shut and threw her head back into the mattress.

“Whyyyy?”

“Because it’s nice and cool in there.”

“It’s nice and cool _everywhere_.”

“Do you want me to drink or not?”

Mochi scowled but relented. She shoved the bottle into her pack and got up off the bed.

“Fine,” she was obviously dissatisfied as she headed towards the door. Bea swung by the kitchen and grabbed a few glasses on her way out.

It wasn’t long until they were under the cover of the Grotto. As they entered the cave again, Mochi was quiet, lips pursed for a moment until:

“Those stalagmites are stupid.”

“They're actually stalactites.”

“They’re stupid rocks is what they are. My caves look better,” Mochi plopped down on the dusty cave floor right next to the ramp leading up to the upper area. She took the bottle of wine out of her pack and took a glass from Bea.

“What do you have against my cave, Mochi?” Bea laughed.

“I mean, it’s more just the fact that you don’t utilize all the space in here,” Mochi swept her arm over the scene before popping the cork on the bottle. She began to pour herself a glass. “You know, what I’d do is-”

And Bea let her continue on like that, criticizing her cave. Of course, she couldn’t find in her to take it seriously, she knew how little the woman probably actually meant to come out as scathing as it did, and she drank with her.

The wine was obviously cheap, but it did its job. One cup turned into two as they sat there for hours, talking about nothing. The sweet taste of pinot noir left her mouth dry the more she drank. She’d gotten a nice buzz by the time Mochi started getting restless.

“What's your favorite slime?” Mochi was flipped over onto her stomach now, elbows supporting her body.

“That's like asking me to choose a favorite child, Moch.”

“Oh, whatever,” she huffed, taking another swig of her drink. “Mine’s phosphor slimes.”

Bea was taken aback.

“I would not have expected that from you,” she said, a bemused smile playing on her lips as she took another sip of wine.

“Why not?” Mochi asked, eyebrows furrowing and she flipped onto her back again. “They're cute. They float and they're shiny and they make your hair glow. I used to get phosphor plorts all the time at festivals when I was a kid.”

Bea could feel Mochi's eyes on her as she set her cup on the ground.

“I thought it would be the gold or quicksilvers. I'd always heard about that stuff,” she said. She pulled her legs up to her chest, wrapped an arm around them, and smiled, “but I was never able to get to a festival to try it out. Kids at my school would come in the week after and still have these,” she gestured to her own hair with her cup, “glowing strands of hair. I almost got the chance while I was training with the ETAC, but I had a final the next day.”

“Omigosh, they were the coolest things as a kid,” Mochi whined and scrunched her eyes shut. She threw an arm over her eyes against the soft glow in the cave. “I used to brag about it so much.”

Bea had gone to take another sip, but she was interrupted as she laughed into her drink.

“That is completely unsurprising.”

Bea watched Mochi frown out of the corner of her eye. She sat up finally, holding her cup with the tips of her fingers. She leaned up against the rocky wall next to Bea and splayed her legs out.

“You didn’t answer my question, Bea.”

Bea leaned her head back against the rock. She watched as her phosphor largos bounced in their corrals, happy.

“Pink slimes are my favorite.”

Mochi was quiet before a disbelieving “Pink?!” escaped her in a poor attempt at covering a laugh. She quickly tried taking a sip to cover it even more.

Clearing her throat and pulling her lips into a straight line, Mochi turned her face away from Bea.

Bea scowled openly at her, cheeks burning.

“Why,” another pause with slightly choked laughter, “Why pink slimes?”

Her voice came out choked, but Bea decided to ignore it. It’s not like she expected different from her.

She took a long sip. So long that Mochi actually kind of composed herself and looked back towards her.

“They were the first slimes discovered, weren’t they? They were the start of all… this,” she gestured out to the cave around them. The corrals and everything. “They might not be the prettiest, or the cutest, or the most interesting,” Mochi snorted, but she quickly busied herself with her drink at Bea’s annoyed look. Bea emphasized her next words, “but they’re versatile. They’re cute and simple. And I don’t know, I just like them.”

“You don’t need to get all defensive about it,” Mochi teased. She bumped Bea’s shoulder with her own. “It’s fine. They’re good slimes.”

“Well, I have a hard time believin’ you when you sound so damn condescending.”

“Ah! There it is! The accent!”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.”

Mochi dissolved into giggles, and Bea almost couldn’t believe how tipsy she sounded. She went to take another, angrier sip of her drink when Mochi spoke again.

“You're cute when you're angry,” and Bea froze. “Don't take that personally, of course.”

The last bit was almost hastily tacked on. Almost everything Mochi said shouldn’t have been taken to heart, Bea knew that. She felt silly about it, but the compliment still made her drunken blush spread to her ears.

She looked over to Mochi to see her studying her.

The eye contact and the silence was just long enough to make her face burn even brighter.

She _needed_ that to stop.

“We should go see some other places. You should see my bit of the ruins,” Bea looked away and grunted as she went to haul herself up off the floor, but the motion made the world spin around her. She grabbed onto the wall to keep her balance and closed her eyes against the dizzying sensation.

“Woooow. You’re really drunk, dude,” Mochi shifted to help support Bea, but all she really accomplished was making the woman feel dizzier with her hand so high up on her thigh.

“You’re one to talk,” Bea muttered, straightening and grabbing Mochi’s hand. She hauled her up, and they were both on their feet. Maybe not as steady as they should have been, but they were up. They drained the last of their glasses.

“I have a bit of ruins on one of the properties,” Mochi started, a bit slurred as they headed out of the Grotto. “Don’t really bother with them, though. There’s not enough left to really set up a ranch out there, and the walk isn’t worth a few quantum slimes.”

They emerged from the cave into the light of the evening sun.

“You’ve gotta watch your step there, yeah,” Bea agreed. “I like it though. Mine are still well preserved.”

As they approached the teleporter to the ruins, the walk sobered Bea up considerably. The sun was steadily setting, and Bea hoped they wouldn’t be out for too long; drinking always made her a bit sleepy.

“What do you find so interesting about the ruins?” Mochi asked suddenly, shoving her empty glass in her pack.

Bea thought for a moment, squinting against the warm evening sunbeams that washed over her face as they walked.

“I guess just thinking about what used to be there. There were others before we came here, the ruins are proof of that, yet we have no idea who or what they were. Isn’t it a little romantic to think about?”

She looked over as Mochi wrinkled her nose.

“I’ve never been a huge fan of figuring out history,” she said. “I’ve always tried to... uh," she scowled as she stumbled over her own feet, "focus on what’s going to happen and how to get there.”

“Makes sense for an engineering major,” Bea smiled wide at Mochi when she looked over again. They came to a stop in front of Bea’s teleporter, and Mochi looked just a tiny bit embarrassed. Bea swore she saw the drunken tinge on her cheeks darken.

As Mochi stepped onto the platform and disappeared in a flash, Bea had to admit it, even just to herself: she looked cute. Bea didn’t know if it was the light, tipsy red tinge to her cheeks or the way she was much more easy in her actions and speech now than she was a month ago, but damn it, she was cute. She didn’t seem too hammered, though, and Bea figured a trip to the ruins _probably_ wouldn’t end in disaster.

The key word there was probably.

* * *

 

Bea swung her legs out over an area filled with quantum and tabby slimes, a third glass of wine now half full in her hand. She and Mochi had found a nice spot that wasn’t too populated by slimes to sit down.

“Yours are in nicer condition than mine are,” Mochi said quietly. The sun was barely above the horizon now, and the night was beginning to set in. Various echoes and phosphor slimes lit the way down below them, and Bea and Mochi both watched them as they bumbled around.

Bea knew that a wine headache was sure to bite her in the ass the next day, but this was nice.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” it came out dreamier than Bea wanted it too, but she figured she could blame that on the wine. Mochi was seated next to her, hunched over with her folded elbows leaning on her knees.

She just grumbled beside Bea, downing the rest of her glass in one go. Bea went to grab the bottle out of her pack, but Mochi held up a hand.

“I think that’s it for me today. I really don’t want to fall from all the way up here.”

Bea giggled and drained her glass too.

“Well, what else do you want to do?” she held out her hand for Mochi’s glass.

There was a pause, then, “I really should be getting back to my ranch.”

Mochi trailed off as she handed it over. Bea frowned slightly, and Mochi saw it. She quickly turned it into a warm smile, and she stood.

“I wouldn’t want to keep you, Moch,” Bea extended her hand to the other to help her up. Mochi stayed seated, however, a pensive look on her face. “I had a lot of fun today. You should come over more often.”

Mochi stared at her, silent. Just when Bea was about to ask if something was wrong, she spoke, and Bea knew then that she had to be fucking _plastered_.

“If you tell me something about your past, I’ll tell you something about mine.”

Bea was wide-eyed. She couldn’t have heard that right. There was no way that Mochi was just going to break the pact of “Do Not Talk About Life On Earth” so blatantly and easily, but Bea could not for the life of her figure out what else she could have said besides that.

She felt her stomach drop down into her shoes.

Mochi instantly looked embarrassed, and she looked away with a pout on her lips.

“What?” Bea’s question came out harsher and more disbelieving than she meant it to.

This time Mochi had no wine glass to busy herself with, so she opted to start pulling grass out of the cracks in between the bricks.

“Sorry if that was lame, but I wanna know. I’d really rather hear your story from you than from my lawyers because they make everything sound so damn boring! I just want to know more about your shop on Earth,” she backpedaled, keeping her eyes glued onto the ground below the shelf they were on.

The way she said it made it sound like she wanted to know more than just about her shop, but in that moment, drunk off of cheap wine in a world so far away from the past, Bea honestly couldn’t find a reason to keep her in the dark.

She stood for just a moment longer.

“There’s not much to tell. I think I told you that I sold plants,” Bea was quiet as she sat back down next to her, except this time her legs splayed out over the ground, her back to the open chasm. She folded her hands in her lap, took a deep breath. Then, Beatrix broke her one rule when it came to talking to Mochi.

“The roommate that I said I had was more than a roommate,” Bea began. She felt like Mochi probably already knew that for some reason, and she couldn’t bring herself to look over at her. “She was my girlfriend. Casey.

“She was a musician and a really good one at that. Guitarist for her band. I met her at a show they opened for in the city after I moved, and we just,” Bea paused before continuing with a sigh. She felt strangely disconnected at the moment. This didn’t hurt as much as she thought it would, “Kind of moved in because of the practicality. I was pretty broke after my trip to Africa, and I had a girl who hooked me up with the shop slash apartment set up, so I asked Casey if she wanted to move in and split the rent.”

She left it at that for a few minutes. She just listened to her own pounding pulse in her ears, but Mochi’s steady breathing and the laughter of slimes brought it down. Mochi was silent, but when Bea finally looked over, her face was softer than she would have expected. She still wasn’t looking over at her, but rather over the ruined expanse. A phosphor largo jumped up to just below where they sat, and its light illuminated Mochi’s features. Her soft lips and her gentle jawline and her nose that sat just perfectly on her face.

Bea felt the burning of silly tears in her throat and swallowed them. Maybe drinking wasn’t the best idea today.

“We didn’t break up because something bad happened, or anything,” she winced at the crack in her voice. She cleared her throat. “It was more just, I don’t know, I guess there was other things that made us happier than each other? If that makes sense?” she heard how desperate and choked up she sounded towards the end, but Mochi didn’t seem to notice.

“It does,” Bea was surprised at how soft Mochi’s voice was. Her eyes were focused on some faraway point, and her hands were passively grabbing onto the edge of the ledge they were sitting on. Bea looked away.

“That’s about it. Nothing interesting,” a feeble laugh escaped her. She tugged on her bandana that suddenly felt way too tight. Now that it was out, she would have given almost anything to take it back, bottle it up, but there was also a strange light feeling that came with the dread as she waited for Mochi to _say something damn it_.

“Don’t say that. It’s… thank you. For telling me.”

Bea jumped at the feeling of her hand being covered by cold fingers. She looked at the woman beside her to find a tight-lipped smile on her face that was illuminated by the eerie yellow light from below. It was officially dark, and the large moon had started its ever dutiful track across the sky.

“What about you?” Bea tried to smile back, but she felt it fall flat. “Can’t listen to me spill my tragic backstory and leave me with nothin’.”

The smile she was hoping to put on Mochi’s face didn’t come. Instead, what remained of Mochi’s fake smile fell. Her eyes hardened as she regarded Bea; her hand retreated, too, as she moved her gaze back out over the expanse. Her eyes held a guarded sort of front, and Bea could almost see Mochi weighing the consequences of telling her what she had to say.

Bea’s stomach dropped for what felt like the thousandth time that night.

“It’s alright, Moch. You don’t need to tell me nothing," as Bea finished, it seemed like Mochi's drunken lack of inhibitions won out.

“My mom died when I was nine,” she started. “Stomach cancer. Boring, I know," she laughed, but it sounded so forced it was painful. Bea's palms sweated as she grabbed at the grass beneath her fingers, desperate to know what to do. She felt like she was going to cry before Mochi even finished. "It was already stage four when they found it, and she refused treatment. Something about how it was only going to 'prolong things,' she was always saying crazy shit like that,” Mochi’s voice was tight and she strung her words together in her haste, but Bea said nothing. She couldn’t think of anything to say. “Anyways, she only... she only lived..."

A hand shot up to her mouth and her head lolled backwards up to face the sky. Then, from behind her palm.

“She died, okay? That’s it.”

Mochi was nearly silent as she ended it. Her hand gripped the brick beneath her so hard that her knuckles were whitened. Bea saw the minute shake in her tense body. She looked down at Mochi’s hand, and it was so close to her that she didn’t even think about it when she laid hers on top.

“Thank you.”

Mochi didn’t say anything, but she didn’t pull her hand away either. It was cold under Bea’s palm, and she scooped it up into her lap.

“Your hands are cold as ice,” she whispered, still shaking slightly as she gently rubbed Mochi’s hand between her pant leg and her own hand. They were also very nice, her nails almost salon poster quality. Her fingers were thin and pale at that moment. Bea gently picked up and closed her own fingers, which felt way too clumsy and big handling Mochi’s much smaller digits, over Mochi’s hand.

“I feel really warm.”

“That’s probably the wine, then.”

They sat together, Mochi’s hand slowly warming in Bea’s grasp. The cold slowly dissipated along with Bea's nerves as she had to swat away a few brambling quantum slimes, and they were otherwise silent side by side.

After a while, the silence was too much to bear. Bea couldn’t take looking at the thinly veiled sadness on Mochi’s face any longer.

Tonight was supposed to be fun, damn it.

“Well, stars, I can’t send you home after all of that,” Bea muttered. She paused, looking out over the ruins, hand paused against Mochi's soft one. “We need to do… something else.”

But alas, she was tired and drunk and that something else could not come to mind. She had to think hard, but the best she could come up with was:

“Come swimming with me.”

Mochi snorted slightly, a small smile finally gracing her face.

“Where?” she turned to look at Bea. She didn't look like she had been crying yet, but sadness still drooped her eyes.

“There’s a few little pools around here that are nice,” Bea stood, helping Mochi up in the process.

“I don’t have a suit.”

“Does that really matter?”

Mochi’s face dropped at that, a slightly mortified look crossing her features.

“Are you suggesting I not wear anything?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Bea laughed. She started to head over to the front of the ruins where she knew one of the pools were, Mochi’s hand intertwined with hers. “I’ve done this a thousand times.”

* * *

 

She smiled at Mochi.

“Don’t act all shy now, you’ve already seen me in my underwear.”

The cooing of embarrassed puddle slimes tittered about around them as Bea slid into the shallow pond. Glowsticks surrounding the pool gave off a strange blue glow while Bea settled, her arms resting on the edge of the stone basin.

The water was cold and refreshing on her sweaty skin. Her boxers clung to her thighs as goosebumps broke out over her stomach. Her clothes laid out over the stones below, and Mochi was standing behind her.

“It's not…” Mochi looked away as she clutched her stomach, a deep red taking over her face as her voice shook. The embarrassed look was only accentuated by the blue light. “It’s just I don’t have a suit,” she whined.

“Do you see me right now?” Bea laughed. She beamed up at Mochi from her spot amongst the puddle slimes. She offered her a soaking hand before saying, “If you’re not comfortable, you don’t have to. You can sit on the edge and roll up your pants or something.”

She was interrupted by Mochi taking off her jacket. Her gloves followed, then her belt, her turtleneck, and her shoes. She wore a plain brown sports bra.

Bea looked away and let her hand plop back into the water as Mochi removed her pants, her own drunken warmth returning despite the cold water. She felt the other woman slip in next to her.

“This isn’t really swimming, you know,” she sounded like she was suppressing a smile. Bea couldn’t see her face as she reached out and petted a passing puddle slime, but the air around them was considerably more relaxed than before. Bea was glad.

“Soaking, then,” Bea said, glancing over at Mochi with a smile. Mochi looked up then, a content expression on her face as a puddle slime moved to hover above her lap.

“This is nice,” she said quietly. She slid down to let her head rest on the edge of the pool, looking up at the deep dark sky above them. As she stargazed, Bea was quiet. She studied her.

Mochi had taken out her ponytail at some point on the way over there, and her hair was now draped over the stone. It almost looked as deep and dark as the sky, incredibly silky and shiny against the blue light.

Bea remembered how strained her voice sounded, how pained her face had looked, and she knew how her own heart felt the same kind of pain.

Suddenly, she was back in elementary school, sobbing about something she no longer remembered into her father’s chest so hard that she almost threw up.

_“You know, it’s okay to need someone sometimes, Trixie,” her father chided, but his hand was soft and gentle as it rubbed circles on her back. “You can’t keep yourself so wound up all the time. You’re goin’ to shoot off into the air one of these days, and I’m not ready to give you up the Range yet.”_

That had made her laugh.

Her chest felt tight as she looked away. The wine was getting the best of her.

* * *

 

They were fully clothed and standing back in the Grotto in front of Mochi’s teleporter a few hours later. Mochi reclaimed her bowl from Bea’s lunch and put it away as they stood, quiet.

“Well, Mochi, I have to say that I had fun today,” Bea turned to her in the dark cave. “I really hope I didn’t keep you from anything important.”

“My drones are competent enough to keep my ranch going for at least a few days. It’s fine.”

A slightly awkward silence ensued before Bea went to shake Mochi’s hand goodbye.

“I meant it when I said I think you should come over more often- Oof.”

Mochi surged forward then, knocking into Bea harder than she probably meant to. Bea felt the other’s hands shaking as she closed her arms around her torso, and she was stunned for a moment.

She was much taller than Mochi, Mochi’s head was buried in Bea’s chest, but she had no issue with leaning down to draw her closer. She laid her cheek on top of Mochi’s head and was hit with a potent whiff of her shampoo. Violets and lavender, it smelled like. A field in early spring. She noticed Mochi’s breathing get as shaky as her hands did for just a moment before regaining composure. Mochi balled up her fists in Bea’s jacket as Bea exhaled slowly.

“I hope you won’t regret what you told me when you’re sober,” Bea whispered into her hair. Mochi retreated, taking with her the strangely comforting weight of her strong hug, but her hands lingered for just a moment on Bea’s forearms. Bea felt goosebumps break out on the skin there, but she wasn’t quite sure why. Mochi’s eyes were almost too intense as Bea looked down at her. “You know that anything you tell me is safe with me, right?”

“Well, duh,” Mochi smiled and rolled her eyes, letting her hands fall back to her sides. “Who else are you going to tell here? I doubt the slimes make for good gossip.”

“I’ll have to say you have them beat in that regard.”

They said their goodbyes, but as Mochi turned to step onto the teleporter, Bea’s throat strained as she raised her hand to salute her on her way. She was overwhelmed by how much she didn’t want her to go.

She instead tugged on her hand, pulling her away from the port.

“Hey,” her voice was altogether too loud for talking to someone right in front of her, and she took a deep breath.

Mochi turned back around with a look that Bea couldn’t quite decipher.

“I just wanted to say I’m glad that you came over today.”

Mochi’s hand lingered for just a moment too long, but she departed with a final squeeze. A kind smile was on her face, and Bea couldn’t help but return it. She felt it wholly, and she was relieved.

“So am I. I’ll see you around, Beatrix.”


	6. Get Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An old friend gives Bea an outlet.

“Beatrix, it’s good to see you.”

Her voice was comforting in its friendly lilt, aged and firm with experience like a grandmother’s. She spoke with just the faintest hint of Bea’s own accent, drawing the damn thing out of Bea’s voice as if she hadn’t been stuck in a city for the last four years of her life on Earth. Bea nodded to her through the range exchange.

“And you, Thora.”

“It’s been a while! Mind getting me a few things to spice up dinner tonight?”

Bea looked over the list of vegetables that popped up on the screen: five heart beets, an odd onion, and an oca oca.

“Should be doable,” Bea shifted her gear, “Is this for anything special?”

“Naw, Hobson was just having some cravings for chicken beet patties,” Thora said. A faint smile graced her face, wrinkling the lightened scar stretched across her nose and right cheek. Her eyes wrinkled, too, as she got lost in her own mind for just a moment, and the image warmed Bea’s heart. Bea crossed her arms in front of her.

“I always say that I’ve got to start cooking more,” Bea said, already planning which gardens she’d need to visit. That day was a slow one, and there was no word from Mochi despite the fact that it had been about a week since they’d had lunch together-

She stopped herself once again from continuing that line of thought.

“Well, I’ll be more than happy to give you some recipes if that’s what you’re after,” Thora’s smile brightened. “Can’t say that it’ll be anything fancy, but comfort food hardly ever disappoints.”

Bea’s stomach nearly growled then and there at the mention of good southern food. She had eaten a quick lunch of flash frozen meat(?)loaf courtesy of 7Zee that day, and anything more real than that sounded good.

“I’d really, really like that.”

She stepped away from the terminal with a smile, waving at the slowly fading image of Thora as she went on her way. On her way to the docks, she sidestepped rad slimes’ radioactive fields until the sea’s wind was gentle on her face and hair.

Her hunter and tangle slimes were also doing well (the tangle slimes usually took to feeding themselves anyway), but she knocked a couple of chickens into their corrals as she was passing just in case. She soon came to her heart beet plot.

Her attention was drawn to the gloopy sounding slime lapping at the wood of the dock. The steady rhythmic sound of the heart beets being unearthed mingled then disappeared, swallowed by the sea. Once what was needed was collected, Bea headed towards the dock.

She had to admit that it was the best upgrade she had purchased. The dock was so deteriorated that she could barely make her way to Hobson’s note without being knocked into the sea, but now it was so beautifully crafted that she couldn’t find it in her heart to regret the hefty price of 7Zee’s upgrade. She glanced down at the gelatinous liquid below as the quiet thunk of her footsteps sounded out. As she made her way down the dock, she stopped at the small island of stone off to the side of the wooden planks and sat down. With her gear unhooked, she shot out and spread out the vegetables in front of her, inspecting them for insects.

She flicked a stray scuttlebug off one of them, and then the smooth skin of the heart beet squeaked slightly under her fingers as she rubbed the dirt off of it.  The ocean breeze brought a clear smell of growing plants and rain with it, and the earthy scent mingled with the wildflowers’ sweet odor in the air.

She found herself frozen, and she listened.

Sometimes, if she tried really hard, she could close her eyes, and it almost seemed as if she was back home in the spring. Suddenly, though, she remembered:

“ _Or maybe it’s because you’re looking to leave something far behind ya. Sure is the way to do it; doesn’t get much further than this._ ”

That was the note she had risked her day for all those months ago. Years ago, now, she supposed. An old adventurer sharing anecdotes about life, adventure, love, sometimes in an inconvenient place, but the contact alone was worth the risk. She’d been so desperately lonely after the first six months that she had been grateful more and more each time she found one of his notes, but then...

She looked to the note at the end of the no longer deteriorated dock, then to the sun, high in its arch, nearly directly on top of her. She was glad that the upgrade 7Zee had installed hadn’t destroyed what he left behind for her.

She stood, deciding she should hurry up so she could get back to Thora.

* * *

“Anything on your mind, Beatrix?” Thora asked, and Bea was startled out of her thoughts. “You look like you’re lost in the clouds.”

“It’s nothing, ma’am. Sorry for spacing out,” Bea hadn’t realized that she had stopped depositing her end of the deal into the exchange, but she promptly got back to it.

“Now, I won’t press, but you should know that offer’s up to talk about it,” Thora settled back, eyes wandering towards her own coordinator while Bea paused for a moment, the sound of vegetables being deposited the only thing to be heard between the two of them.

_Thunk._

_“If you tell me something about your past...”_

_Thunk._

_“I’ll tell you something about mine.”_

_Thunk._

_“No don’t say that. It’s… Thank you. For telling me.”_

Just before she ran out of heart beets to deposit, she spoke again.

“Mochi and I partnered up a while ago.”

She pulled her eyes away from her task enough to see Thora widen her eyes slightly, and then her concerned frown turned upwards in a gentle smile. She chuckled, bringing a hand to rest on top of her vacuum, “I’m sorry Bea, but I don’t see how that could be weighing on your mind. I’m sure it brings a pretty penny?”

“Yeah, money problems aren’t a part of it at all. I don’t even have a problem with it, really, but it’s,” Bea paused, “strange,” she cleared her throat, keeping her eyes trained on depositing the odd onions.

“She’s a stubborn girl,” was all Thora said.

“That she is, ma’am,” Bea laughed as she trailed off. She didn’t have a _problem_ , per se, but... “If you don’t mind me asking, what was it like for you the first time you met Hobson?”

Thora sighed, shifting her hands on top of her vac.

“Things were different back then. We needed to share resources to get the ranches up and running, so we weren’t alone for as long as you all are now. I’m guessing that’s what you’re gettin’ at?”

Bea said nothing.

“Listen,” Thora sighed again, “I’m the first to admit that I’m not the fondest of all the changes that’ve happened here on the Range, and the isolation of it all is up there on my list. If I were away from people as long as you have, hell, I’d’ve probably been near ecstatic for some company,” Bea bit the inside of her cheek and pursed her lips.

“Did you and him spend a lot of time together?” she busied herself with depositing the last of her part of the deal and collecting Thora’s gifts before they exploded all over the ranch.

“Near every chance I got,” Bea looked up from wrangling a chicken into her pac to see that that faraway look had returned to Thora’s eyes.

It made her feel incredibly happy.

“I’m glad you guys ended up moving in together,” Bea said.

“I bet you are,” Thora returned to earth with a loud laugh, slapping the handle of her vac. “If the old fart hadn’t made up his mind, _finally_ , may I add, you’d’ve been out of a ranch.”

Bea succeeded in gathering all of Thora’s gifts with a loud bark of laughter.

And then she was laughing and laughing and-

“Beatrix, are you doing all right?”

Bea let out a frustrated groan, rubbing her hands down over her face to reveal the slightly muddled smile beneath. Her groan slowly tapered off into mirthful laughter yet again.

“It’s all just so _different_ from Earth.”

She had never felt so alone while with company on Earth. She'd never craved someone's presence so much on Earth. She didn't know of that made her a bad girlfriend to Casey or not, but she had never noticed what a toll the two years of isolation were taking on her until it... wasn't there anymore.

“Oh, kiddo, this here is nothing like Earth,” Thora laughed. “Not the one I came from, at least.”

“Trust me, it’s not like the one I came from either,” Bea’s lips fell into a slightly rueful smile as her hands fell. “Anyways, thanks for the hen hens, Thora. It’s much appreciated.”

“Oh, Beatrix, it’s not a problem. Thanks for making dinner that much easier on these old bones.”

“Anytime, neighbor.”

And with that, the screen was dark yet again, and Beatrix was alone.

* * *

 

Hours later, once plorts were collected, slimes were fed, and damage control was done for the more destructive slimes, she was in bed again, holding her plushie and laying down with headphones on.

This time, she had a film from the early 2100s playing from her monitor in English, and it was some kind of documentary about the emergence of New World. She didn’t really know though, honestly. She wasn’t paying attention.

As much as she hated herself for being possessive, she missed the conversation that only Mochi seemed capable of providing her with. Her quick wit, her sharp tongue, her everything was something that seemed to be lacking with the other ranchers. Not that Bea was ungrateful for the company of Thora, or Odgen, or Viktor, but she…

She wanted to justify it, but she couldn’t think of why Mochi had to be the one she wanted to talk to. She was a friend, just like the others. Granted, the only friend she had made physical contact with in three years, but still a friend just as good as any.

So why-

A ding from her headphones made her shoot up in bed because _damn it,_ she needed to adjust the volume on that damn setting, and she saw that a starmail was open on her screen, its loud and obnoxious white light beaming out into the dark room.

 

**_no subject_ **

_Mochi Miles_

 

_Bea get ur ass over to mines. Been busy n need 2 talk._

 

_Got another possible job opening 4 u._

_Thx._

 

Bea had no time for shame as she threw her headphones onto her bed and stumbled into her shoes. The trip was quick to the Grotto and Valley, but just as she stepped onto the teleporter to Mochi’s that she realized that she _would be there literally a minute after she sent her email._

She spent the entirety of the trip over gripping her face in shame, too embarrassed at the prospect of appearing entirely too eager to see her again. It didn’t matter that she was indeed too eager. She wondered if she could manage to quickly phase back over to the Valley and wait a few more minutes before Mochi noticed she had come over, but that plan was quickly dashed to the slime sea as she materialized in Mochi’s manor.

There she was. She was doubled over and out of breath standing in front of the teleporter.

Bea stood there for a moment with her hand clasped close to her chest as she looked down at Mochi. Then, Mochi looked up, looking like a kid that had just been caught with her hand in a cookie jar.

They were silent for a solid ten seconds, and Bea knew that because she actually counted. Her mouth fell open to say something, but no sound came out. Finally, Mochi straightened, flipping her hair over her shoulder before placing her hand on her hip.

“Hey, Bea. Came a little fast, didn’t you?” it was dark, but Bea was pretty sure that there was some embarrassment in her voice. As she came to her senses, she mentally kicked her own ass as her mind strayed to the other ways that that could be taken.

It was in that moment that she was visited once again by Hobson’s wisdom. When she was so caught up in the glass desert’s ethereal beauty that she couldn’t help but feel connected with her heart in a way she had never been before, she had found his note.

_“Always remember to use your head, but let your heart do the thinkin’ every now and again.”_

“Hey, Mochi,” Bea awkwardly stepped down beside her.

_“It might surprise ya.”_

He and Thora were a good match.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry about that wait! School's been insane and I've had trouble even having any free time, let alone free time to devote to this. I can't promise how soon the next chapter will be up, but I can promise that it will be longer than this one! This is more of a buffer between chapters because I felt like things were going a bit too fast, so I hope that this spaces it out better. I wish I could get everything done and then post it, but as is, I'm an impatient person and I like to publish as I write lol. Made some adjustments to the last chapter as well since I didn't like the way some of Mochi's dialog was set up.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	7. Come Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another deal is struck, and Mochi needs Bea's help more than ever.

The muggy night was nearly completely silent as Bea stood there. Her eyes busied themselves with the twinkling sky and bouncing phosphor largos in their many corrals. Her hands found each other in a nervous grip behind her back, and she waited for Mochi to say… something. Anything, really.

It didn’t come.

“So, about the job?” she dared to glance at Mochi, whose own gaze was occupied by the ground. Her chest was still silently heaving, but she seemed to be pulled back to earth at that moment.

After a brief pause, Mochi said, “Walk with me.” Her voice was firm, and she turned on her heel resolutely, the gravel beneath her crunching lightly as her brisk steps carried her away from Bea. Bea’s hands fell out from behind her back and quickly found a new home in the pockets of her cargo shorts when she hustled to keep up. She picked at the small tear in the right’s seam (she really needed to get that mended soon) while she kept her eyes locked on the woman in front of her for fear of losing her in this maze of corrals. Her details came and went in and out of clarity as they passed the bundles of luminescent slimes, and the small green lights that were embedded along the edge of the path glowed with slightly unsettling vigilance. At least she wouldn’t lose her way without her flashlight.

On that note, she regretted that she even left her gear in her haste to get there, and she hoped Mochi wouldn’t notice.

Bea was faced with Mochi’s hair bouncing in her perfectly coiffed ponytail as they trudged on in the darkness. The silence between them was suffocating; the only brief reprieve that they were allowed was the joyous laughter of satisfied slimes as they passed row after row of neat corrals.

“Is this another quicksilver mission?” Bea’s voice came slightly strained in her attempt to break the silence. Mochi’s pace didn’t slow as she answered. A flippant “yes” was tossed over her shoulder along with a small glance backwards, causing her hair to swing even further with the movement and plunging them yet again into silence.

Chilly wind nipped at Bea’s bare calves and arms, and the teleporter to Mochi’s manor soon made its appearance in the dark. As they came to it, Mochi only spared Bea a quick “come hither” sign with her finger before she walked on and disappeared into a whirl of tiny particles. Bea took the hit and followed soon after.

She breathed a deep sigh while the world whirred away into a mechanical oblivion. The air around her there was much less stuffy, for as the walls of the colossal cliff edges disappeared and gave way to the large, open, grassy area, the air slowly but surely grew sweeter. She didn’t know if there was a patch of wildflowers nearby or what, but the air was definitely nicer.

It also could’ve been chalked up to the fact that her silence was finally gone, even if it was just for a moment. Whatever it was, though, Bea hopped down and onto the ground below. Mochi had done her the decency of at least waiting around for her. Once again, she took off in front of Bea, and, once again, she followed. The humidity that hung in the air seemed to cling to her cheeks and weave its bothersome fingers into her loosely done up hair. She could feel a single bead of sweat roll down her bicep, and she hastily swiped it away. She just hoped she wouldn’t have to deal with a broken ponytail in the midst of all this.

As they neared the large estate, the cabins hung calmly in the air above them, silent in their watch. Bea craned her head to watch the moon as they made their way 

The click of the door opening echoed out into the empty manor. The entryway itself was huge, but Bea was again reminded how she actually had seen very little of the house aside from Mochi’s meeting room, the kitchen, and the hallways conjoining the two. She made a mental note to have Mochi give her a house tour sometime.

As they approached the familiar room, Bea waited behind Mochi as she took her spot behind the stylish glass desk. 

“I know this is sudden,” Mochi muttered, grabbing her handheld off of her waist and plopping down in her chair. “I’ve been meaning to contact you sooner than this, but these clients have proven to be a thorough pain in my-

“Anyways,” Mochi interrupted herself and tapped her screen with a single finger. She then laid it on the table and turned it to Bea, the holographic image that popped up much cooler looking than anything she had seen on her own tech, “I have a bit of a bigger order. They’re asking for roughly two thousand. You managed to get more than I asked for last time, though, so,” Mochi displayed the number “2,000” on her screen, then with another swipe of her finger, the number quickly began to dwindle down. A second later, the number was knocked down to 1,627. “You don’t need to get quite that many. Time frame is relatively the same, four weeks, but again, I can talk my way into extending the deadline a bit.”

Beatrix sat back and relaxed in her chair. She crossed her arms as she contemplated the amount of work that would go into this, and she was already shifting her schedule around. If she managed to fill up the corrals in Ogden’s retreat with food, she wouldn’t have to worry about them running out for a good two weeks. She already had an excess of prickly pears, so her dervishes would be taken care of if she decided to utilize the drone update she hadn’t given a whirl to yet, and the rest could be taken care of relatively easy.

“Alright. I’ll make it a priority then,” Bea smiled easily, sitting forward once she had something resembling a game plan in her head. “Should have it done by the third week if everything goes according to plan.”

Mochi seemed to let go of an invisible weight as she let her hands fall from their bridged position in front of her chest, and with that weight went some of the uncomfortable atmosphere. The sound of rolling chair wheels sounded out as she turned her eyes back to her coordinator. The image of the number faded, and in its stead came a jumble of graphs and numbers Bea didn’t even want to try and begin to understand.

Mochi scrolled through it with a bored, tired look in her eye, seeming to have remembered the graphs in their entirety. One slightly chipping fingernail tapped on the glass desktop that her hand rested on. Bea’s leg started to bounce in tandem to it, and it was then that she couldn’t help but try to dispel the rest of the tension in Mochi’s shoulders.

“I talked to Thora today. They’re doing well.”

Mochi humphed and turned her handheld off with a minute flick of her wrist. 

“That’s good, I guess,” Mochi looked at Bea with unimpressed eyes. “I haven’t had much of a chance to deal with the range exchange. I…” she trailed off, the rest of her fingers taking to tapping the glass beneath them. Bea waited patiently for her to speak again. She finished with resting both her palms down on the desk.

She didn't finish what she wanted to say, so Bea finished it for her.

“We all get busy, Moch,” Bea said, clasping her hands together at her knees as she hunched over her own lap. “It’s alright.”

Mochi’s lips drew into a tight line.

“I do have to say I missed you,” Bea chuckled, her eyes drifting to the tiled floor below. She dared to look up at Mochi, but she found that she had lost her gaze once again. “Had to eat lunch with the gordo hanging out near my ranch for a whole week. Wasn’t much for company.”

Instead of the laugh she was hoping for, Mochi turned from her and seemed to be tapping away at her handheld with renewed vigor. Bea frowned.

“That’s a joke, by the way,” she deadpanned. The only thing she got as a response was a whispered “shit” as Mochi spun back around.

“They just upped their quota,” Mochi gasped, face slowly falling into a fearsomely angry glower. “Seriously, what the hell do I look like?! Like I’m some loser nobody who has nothing else to do?” Beatrix didn’t comment on how it wasn’t Mochi who was the one getting the plorts, “Where do they get off at, I- Gah!”

She slammed the coordinator down onto the table and stood up. She took to pacing the room with speed, and Bea could do nothing but follow Mochi’s train of thought as she sat.

“How unprofessional, how utterly  _ stupid  _ do you even have to be,” she ranted while she paced the perimeter of the room. She grabbed the holophone up from the glass when she passed by the desk again, and she silently reread the email Bea supposed she had gotten.

“I’m sure I can still get it all done with-” Bea was interrupted by an (she assumed) unintentionally loud reply.

“No, Beatrix, with a quota this large  _ I’ll  _ have to help. There’s  _ no way _ you can do this on your own.”

“Try me,” Bea said, standing herself. Mochi let out another huff, eyes scanning the phone over and over, and Bea was surprised that the damn thing hadn't melted under her gaze yet.

“They gave me some bullshit excuse about a typo,” Mochi tugged frustratedly on her ponytail, “It’s twenty thousand they want.”

Oh.

Well, that certainly was a bit more than two grand.

“Can’t you refuse an order that big? Especially since they were unclear in their quota…”

“No, it wasn’t the client who was unclear,” Mochi’s words came out in a jumbled, rapid fire line. She wasn’t looking at Bea, but Bea could see the gears in her head working at a million miles an hour. “It was my  _ incompetent _ communications officer, and I already gave him the go-ahead to givemy _ wordugh. _ ”

Mochi’s voice choked up at the last part of her sentence. She let out another groan, eyebrows furrowing and eyes blinking away frustrated tears, and she seemed to be barely restraining herself from smashing her coordinator into a million pieces on the tile. Bea raised a calming hand, gently prying the thing out of Mochi’s heated grip before she set it back on the desk.

“Hey, listen. It’ll be okay,” she soothed. She placed her hand carefully on Mochi’s shoulder. “We can get started soon.”

“I’m heading out tonight,” Bea raised an eyebrow, casting a glance out the small window behind the desk. It was pitch black outside. “You can go home if you want, but I won’t be able to sleep until I get started.”

With that, she was on her way, and Bea followed her out of the room. Mochi’s stride, ever resolute, remained unchanged until she grabbed her gear from the shelf beside the front door. When she reached the door, she paused and looked back.

“Are you coming?”

Bea jogged up to the door and followed her out.

“I’ll need to swing back by my place before we get started.”

“What? Why didn’t you bring your gear?” her gaze shifted from Bea’s waist to her eyes as the door clicked shut behind them, and Bea couldn’t hold it.

“I didn’t think about it.”

“Well, whatever, just hurry up.”

* * *

Thankfully, the Nimble Valley was much cooler and much less humid than the other parts of Mochi’s property. Due to Bea needing to grab her pac, Mochi conceded to starting at the parts of the Valley nearest Bea’s place.

“Okay, so I’m going to use the north bottlenecks to the best of my ability, which is amazing, by the way,” Mochi was looking out over the first track with her hand on the generator's button. “You can try using the ones to the east.”

Bea held her modified vac up so it was facing the sky, and she looked behind them towards the East. For now, the course was dark, and the densely packed sand cast eerie shadows onto itself in the moonlight.

“Let's do this.”

The generator behind them churned to life, and the countdown sounded out with startling abruptness. Mochi took the left leading path after the quickly appearing silvery slimes, and Bea headed to the right.

She felt herself smiling as the chilly air rushed past her face. Her feet pounded the sand beneath them, barely managing to not step in the little balls of yet-to-be-electrified goo. She saw a charge station appear, and what it held brought even deeper satisfaction to Bea.

A Thunderclap charge was awaiting her. She nearly slipped as she hurdled through the station. It wasn’t long until she was able to get down to business; she’d managed to get a load of spark shocks in her vac before running into a large group of the slimes, and when she did, she shot with calculated abandon.

She got body slammed only a few times by the oncoming crowd a couple of times. While it hurt, the ever driving urge to increase her plort yield pushed her forward.

As she quickly racked up her plort count, she tried to find a balance between running with the slimes and waiting for them to pass her by. She and Mochi passed each other several times, and Bea was nearly knocked over by her the second time through. Busy hands pulled the other up before going their respective ways again, and Bea’s heart pounded in her chest all the while. 

She was feeling rather confident when she hopped off of a standalone island. Up in the air, she gained a vantage point she couldn’t have on the ground, but she found herself quickly running out of spark shots. 

She went to hop off of the floating land. She miscalculated just how hard she would have to punch the jetpack to land with minimum damage to her ankles, and she totally missed her opportunity to get back down on the track. She instead soared over the herd of slimes and, thankful that she had managed to brace herself, landed with only a slight bashing of her calves against a stone overhanging. She hopped up.

With a few masterful yet shaky leaps, she was able to get onto one of the floating magneticore islands, and she spotted Mochi down below. She was busy trying to straddle a large herd of slimes into a manageable group and failing. Spark shots rang out into the night while Mochi jumped backwards, and Bea winced as she heard the telltale  _ boom  _ of a quicksilver hitting Mochi’s leg.

“Dammit!” Mochi yelled. She stumbled backwards onto the sloping stone behind her, and she jumped over the herd to move on ahead of it.

A flash of red caught Bea’s attention. On her vac, she saw that they had less than thirty seconds left. How an hour had gone by so quickly, she couldn’t tell you, but she knew she had to think fast to make this outing worth it in its entirety.

“I'm out!” Mochi was still running ahead of the group, and Bea looked at the clock on her pac with her heart pounding in her throat. There was a lot she could do with twenty-five seconds, she reasoned with herself.

“Mochi!” her mind ran faster than her feet as her voice rang out over the metallic noises of the plort collection process, “Keep as many of them stuck in that corner as you can!”

Down below, Mochi almost didn’t jump over another barrelling slime, distracted by Bea’s command. From her position on top of the island, Bea was able to tell that Mochi doubted her sanity for a moment, but she shot her last slow field into the bottleneck with only a slight eye roll. The entire pack began to like up behind the field. Bea let out a small whoop as she jumped. Gravity pulled her faster and faster toward the ground, and she braced herself against the light kickback of her vac, shot out the remaining charges she held, and took as good an aim as she could while in free-fall.

Entire groups of ten, even fifteen slimes were hit by the Thunderclap charges Bea sent out. A satisfied “Yea-ha-ha!” escaped her as her plort count skyrocketed, and she landed just as the generator ran out of juice. Mochi came to a stop beside her, vac pac loosely held at her side.

“Not… not bad…” Mochi said, taking deep, barely contained breaths. Bea beamed with the praise, and she tried to let it distract her from the burning pain in her ankles.

“Thanks!” she held her fist out. Mochi stared blankly at her for a minute, and her eyes shifted between Bea's fist and her face several times before bringing her own hesitant fist up. Bea punched it softly. “That's the most plorts I've ever managed to get in one run! How many do you have?”

Mochi huffed while she checked the vac's display. 

“About 370.”

“Hell yeah!” Mochi looked back towards the generator with a small crease between her brows. Bea felt the tiredness finally begin to catch up to her in her post-adrenaline crash, and she leaned back against the rock to her left. She lightly knocked her vac against the natural wall, being careful not to crush her pac behind her. “I think I’m pooped for the night, though. We should both get some sleep.”

“I don’t-”

_ “Mochi,”  _ her exasperated groan was punctuated with an eyeroll; something Mochi did not miss as she turned to fix Bea with an irritated glare.

“Need to sleep,” even as she pointedly tried to draw herself up further to show how not tired she was, Mochi yawned loudly. She sagged under the weight of her pac, and Bea looked at her with her own half-lidded scowl. “Shut up,” Mochi grumbled, taking off in an unsteady line towards the warp pad.

“I,” another yawn interrupted her, and Bea smiled at her back, “I  _ guess _ we could sleep for a little while. You totally owe me in the morning though. My place, first thing. Got it?”

“Mhmm.”

Bea found it hard to keep her balance while she walked, evidenced by her nearly falling off of the returning pad at the manor. Mochi caught her, and she righted her briefly before pulling ahead. Bea followed Mochi as she walked over the first connecting bridge. Their footsteps accompanied the nearby babbling of the waterfall, and the lanterns threw a pleasant light over the peaceful scene. Bea would have enjoyed it more if she didn’t have to convince herself to not lay right down on the ground and sleep.

They left the island and their souped up vac pacs behind with it, and Mochi caught her arm as she tried to make a left towards the warp pad. Her glove was firm against Bea’s bare forearm. Bea didn’t even question the unyielding touch, blindly following wherever it took her as long as she exuded minimum energy while doing it.

As they descended the natural stairs to the manor, Bea noticed that it looked beautiful against the steep cliff behind it.

“So, uh,” Bea yawned herself this time, “am I not going home?”

She couldn’t tell if Mochi rolled her eyes or not. Their gear jingled as they crossed the yard and passed under the entryway arch.

“Don’t be stupid,”  _ yawn, _ “You don’t look like you could make it halfway out of that stupid cave of yours without passing out,” Mochi brought her coordinator out of her pocket and held it up to the door, and she threw Bea a look she couldn’t quite decipher as she approached the door.

“Hey, why didn't you ever give me a key to this place?” Bea tried hard to enunciate her words correctly as sleep pulled at her brain.

“You never asked for it,” Mochi said. She punctuated her statement by shoving the door open, her tired eyes holding Bea with some contempt as she stepped over the threshold. “Shoes off.”

Bea did as she was requested and left her loafers at the door.

“Listen,” Mochi began slowly. Her socked feet made next to no noise as she led Bea through the ever luxurious hallways, the ceilings high and the walls elegantly decorated with art that Bea couldn't understand but was probably still worth more than her whole ranch, “This is… one of my smaller properties, as you know. There's only one bed equipped here, so don't make this weird, okay?”

By then, Bea's eyes began to droop against the enticing warmth of the heating system kicking on in Mochi’s manor. She ran a hand over her cheek, rubbing some tiredness from it.

“It's only weird if you make it weird,” she mumbled against her hand, and she dropped her gear where she stood. Mochi didn't even make a disapproving frown as they passed several closed doors on their way up to the bedroom.

“No, it's only weird if  _ you  _ make it weird.”

Bea didn't answer that.

Some avant garde staircase that honestly made Bea feel like she was going to fall off of it led them up to the warp pad. 

“Why’s there a warp pad in your-” s he wasn’t left with an option as Mochi stepped on and dragged her along, and one majorly disorientating trip later, a bedroom appeared in front of her. 

Her legs were made of lead. They didn’t hurt quite yet, but Bea could feel the ache tomorrow would bring. She just barely managed to keep her balance as she stepped off the warp. All that was said between them was a groggy “Try not to get dirt everywhere,” and Bea was out before she hit the sheets of Mochi's bed.

* * *

Light. Bright light.

Bea’s neck ached with the position she was in and the steadily building headache that was brewing in her temples. She scrunched her eyes against the invading brightness by curling up further, digging her face further into the soft warmth below. With it, a groan sounded out from above, accompanied by an annoyed, groggy voice.

Her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, but the voice came through with an unsettling clarity.

“Quit it.”

A quiet huff lifted her head up and down, and Bea opened her eyes.

Pale, soft skin was what first met her gaze, framed by a scrunched up sweater and the dirtied elastic waistband of rayon pants. 

Her head spun with the force which she sat up with. The blanket came with her in a flurry of well crafted silk, and she stood on her knees. Mochi was slower on the uptake, sleepy hand still trying to keep Bea's warmth close to her, pulling down on her shoulder. 

“I'm sorry!”

Bea's exclamation was punctuated by her knee hitting the floor with a painful thud. A low groan escaped her as she fell the rest of the way off the bed, away from the warmth that she desperately craved in the chill… was it still morning? She highly doubted it since they had gone well into the early morning running with the slimes. But she was at least slightly away from the source of her embarrassment, too, and she closed her eyes tight against her pain.

From the bed came only a single surprised grunt. Bea nursed her aching knee as she heard Mochi rise behind her, shifting the sheets as she sat up. Bea couldn't face her, not now, not after her face had been lying on her bare stomach for stars knew how long and being situated between her  _ legs  _ for most of their impromptu sleepover.

She couldn’t bear to see if there was any dried drool on her cheek.

She heard Mochi shift and then sit on the bed, and she could just feel her eyes on her. 

“I-” Mochi seemed to stop herself, and Bea wanted to wrap herself up into the blanket she had taken with her on her fall, curl into the fetal position, and die. That was how she’d die. Not from a courageous albeit stupid death falling into the slime sea or battling feral largos, no, not anything so dignified. She’d die of embarrassment.

She closed her eyes as she thunked her head against the wood-tiled floors.

“Get a hold of yourself, Beatrix. It’s not a huge deal or anything.”

The tension didn’t leave Bea’s shoulders even as Mochi slid off of the bed, but she did open her eyes. A sea of green hair pooled on the floor around her head. She glared down at the wood grain below her; the golden sunlight drifted through the parted pieces of her hair. 

“We’re going over to yours for breakfast. I don’t have any food here,” a hand came down on Bea’s shoulder. She finally managed to tear her gaze from the floor while the hand pushed her up into a sitting position.

Mochi’s hair was an absolute mess, Bea noticed with an amused kind of surprise. She guessed that both of their hair ties had been lost to the infinite cosmos of the blankets. One loop of her dark hair had been wrapped around a dangly earring, and Bea resisted the urge to untangle it before it snagged. 

“Jeeze, Bea,” Mochi squatted down next to her, “Did you  _ try  _ to hurt yourself as much as possible?” Her eyes were glued to her shins, and Bea was glad for the excuse to intensely study any other part of the room that Mochi wasn’t in.

“I’ve had worse,” Bea laughed awkwardly. She didn’t even need to see the bruises to know she’d had worse because she couldn’t really feel these quite yet. “Probably looks worse than it feels,” she said as she shifted her leg to look at it. Sure enough, a large deep purple bruise was spread over the majority of the brown, tanned skin of her right shin. Connected to it by thin, winding purple lines were several smaller bruises.

“My med station can fix that,” Mochi said quietly, and Bea looked at her just in time to see her fingers hovering just slightly over the large bruises on her left leg. She swore she could feel her cold hands seeping warmth away from the small aches and pains in her leg, and the eye contact was inevitable. They both froze. 

Genuine concern was evident in those steely brown eyes until it fell away into something unreadable, and Bea found that that was becoming a pattern. She'd never been great at reading people, but Mochi's heart always seemed to... dance. An almost tentative waltz between the locked cage of her ribs and her sleeve. It was strange but so utterly like her that Bea couldn't imagine her looking at her any other-

“Anyway! Hurry up, we still need to make breakfast before we head out again.”

Mochi stood with enough speed that her hair flew back behind her shoulder. She crossed the small room speedily, and she never turned back as she disappeared through the warp. Bea grabbed onto the bed frame behind her to help her stand. Cheeks still burning, she righted herself and looked toward the window.

Bright yellow sunlight was streaming in, and she hoped the humidity hadn't reached the Nimble Valley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm honestly wondering if I'm going to be able to label this fic as a slow burn at some point lol. It's my goal, but I'm not sure my lesbian heart can hold out on Beachi romance for that long. We're up to nearly thirty thousand words now! I think if I end up with fifty thousand without any explicit romance, I'll go ahead and add the slow burn tag. I'm not super great with pacing, though, so who knows. As of right now, the closest romantic nonsense is a couple of chapters ahead, but I find myself pushing it further and further back because I don't want it to feel forced. I'm perfectly content with the witty back and forth "totally not flirting" between the two of them atm, so I hope that I'm doing it well.
> 
> As always, hope you enjoyed, and I hope you guys let me know what you think!


End file.
